Chapter 9
In This Chapter
Seeing the benefits of using Facebook for business
Attracting and keeping community members
Making your page more prominent in News Feeds
Benefitting from advanced features
Facebook may be one of the first sites you think of when you consider deepening your digital experience as either an individual or a business. According to statistics on AllFacebook – the 'Unofficial Facebook Blog' (http://allfacebook.com/morrison-foerster-time-spent-facebook_b105616) an average user spends just less than seven hours a month on the site, updating their status, connecting with friends and family members, liking pictures, and skimming for news from their favorite brands and businesses. This is more than any other platform. Facebook is the first online site that many users visit to start their day and the last one they click to in the evening before shutting everything down. What this means to you is that Facebook offers a huge, active potential audience — and huge rewards for any business that knows how to engage this audience.
In this chapter, we walk you through the best ways to deepen your relationships with your community on Facebook, post quality content in your News Feed that draws the attention it deserves, and master the many specialized features in Facebook.
Every time we say Facebook Timeline, we’re talking about a personal or individual page, and every time we say Facebook Page, we’re talking about a brand, company, or business page. Also, though the term fan is no longer used by Facebook to refer to someone who likes your business page, we still refer to fans rather than “Likers” for simplicity’s sake. Got it?
Building Deeper Relationships on Facebook
As of September 2012, Facebook had more than 1 billion active users. (To put this figure in perspective, consider this fact: If Facebook was a country, it would be the third-largest in the world, after China and India.) Those 1 billion users include 11 million businesses with Facebook pages, all of which, like you, are striving to strengthen relationships with their communities.
Businesses use their pages primarily to
Engage with customers: Generate conversation and become more than the logo. Ask your customers questions, and respond to customers whenever they ask a question or reply to yours.
Share pictures and videos: Show and tell. Highlight events that are happening around you, with your company, or with your products. Give your audience a sneak peek behind the scenes of your company, and make them feel like a part of your tribe. In Figure 9-1, Lisa Lehmann, of Studio Jewel, regularly uploads photos of her jewelry — pieces that she’s working on now and the ones she has available for immediate shipping (especially around holidays).
Provide news and updates: Use Facebook as an opportunity to keep your community “in the know.” Share your newest product launches, company updates, and related industry or topical news that would be of interest to your fans and followers.
Sell products: In addition to sharing news about your products, you can take the extra step to create an e-commerce option for your Facebook fans and followers and sell directly to them from your Facebook page. The National Retail Foundation found that more than 25 percent of Facebook users have purchased directly from a business page, and that number continues to grow with the introduction of Facebook Gifts (http://www.facebook.com/about/gifts), a feature that lets Facebook members buy products for each other by way of the Facebook site.
eBay Stores (http://stores.ebay.com), Etsy (www.etsy.com), Shopify (www.shopify.com), and a variety of other sites offer apps that can be linked directly to your Facebook page to offer a sales option. These apps plug directly into your business page so that the shopping experience for your fans is seamless and they don't have to leave Facebook to buy from you.
Make community members feel special: Treat your Facebook community as members of a special club. Make them the first to know about company news and product updates. Make them eligible for special contests, giveaways, and discounts.
Provide customer support and care: It’s your chance to turn every customer into a raving fan by responding to queries and concerns directly and honestly.
Figure 9-1: Studio Jewel lets its Facebook fans know when pieces are available for shipping.
Growing Your Page Community
Someone from your community who likes or comments on your Facebook business page obviously wants a connection with you. That person wants to feel special and to be acknowledged and to know that you’re paying attention. Clicking the Like button is an investment of their time and attention. They’re publicly endorsing your brand. Your fans are the people who want to know more about you and who are interested in connecting with the community you build — a community of people with shared interests whether it’s healthy, prepared food that’s delivered to your home or cowboy boots or photography.
Increasing follower loyalty
A recent study by www.socialmediaexaminer.com found that 51 percent of Facebook users said they're more likely to buy from brands they follow. A person initially follows your brand on Facebook because he genuinely likes you or wants to learn more about you. If your brand is engaging, you can establish a connection with those prospects and help them feel that they belong. With increased engagement and responsiveness, you move from someone liking your brand with a click to increased brand recognition and loyalty.
Here are some of the best ways to create a loyal following from the community at your page:
Craft a plan. Determine your target market. Is your ideal audience made up of families who want to have their healthy food delivered? Or are you looking to reach moms with little girls? After you pinpoint who you want to reach, finding and attracting an audience to your page isn’t a short-term process. Put in place a plan to help grow your page.
Provide quality engagement. Everything you put on your page — every picture, every video, every status update — is a reflection of you and your brand. Aim for quality. Know that every post can be shared, so don’t slack off on paying attention to the information you publish. If your audience likes what you have to say, they’ll pass it on, and when they do, your name — your brand — will be attached. The more people share what you publish, the more exposure you receive to continue building your community.
Establish trust. Your community consists of your people. Talk to them as though you respect them. Ask their opinions. Answer questions when they ask them of you. Every time you do something right, and every time you share, they not only return the good word about you but also spread it around.
Be real. If you’re an authentic brand who is staying true to your values and vision, your community will notice. gDiapers, the “earth-friendly hybrid of diapers,” uses the Australian expression fair dinkum to describe its overall company culture and philosophy. Its employees aim, as part of their company mission, to be genuine and real with everyone they encounter, so it comes as no surprise to the company’s nearly 47,000 Facebook fans when the brand chooses to support a specific charity with the sale of one of its products, as shown in Figure 9-2. gDiapers is sticking to its mission, and its fans take notice.
Stick to a schedule. Consistency is vital to the success of your page. As with other SME platforms, it’s worse to establish a presence and stop posting than to never have a presence in the first place. Decide whether to post daily, twice a day, or more. Later in this chapter, we offer suggestions for optimum posting.
Listen and respond. One major benefit of having a business page is that it gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience, to let them know that they’ve been heard. The Kraft brand Lunchables has a policy of responding to every comment on its page (whether the comment is a compliment, question, or complaint) within four hours, but someone often manages to reply much sooner. See an example of this responsiveness in Figure 9-3.
Track progress. Be diligent about whatever it is that excites your community. Do they share your pictures like crazy? Do they love to be asked their opinions? Or do you hear crickets (silence!) the more you add standard status updates? To better engage with your fans on their terms, do more of what they love.
Figure 9-2: gDiapers announces charitable donations tied to the sale of a product.
Figure 9-3: The Lunchables response to a customer, which the customer liked.
Take your time. You’re in this for the long haul. Building a community that you can be proud of requires a time commitment and a willingness to continually improve what you’re doing as you go.
Managing your community on Facebook is obviously a big job — for more information on best practices to create connections within your community, refer to Chapter 6.
When your audience and fans feel connected to you, they like the content you put on your page. When they enjoy the communication you have together, they like your page, and they like your pictures, your links, and your videos. When they trust you, when they feel heard, when they know that you’re listening — in essence, when they truly feel engaged — they go even a step further and share your brand with others.
Your goal is likely to attract more comments and more likes on your page, but what you really want are more shares — because they lead to more likes and comments. It’s one big circle of engagement.
Consider these tips for increasing your post likeability:
Ask a question. Though it may seem to be a good idea to ask it at the beginning of a post, we recommend that you ask it at the end of a short post. Ask the question after a link or accompanying a picture. One study by Buddy Media aimed at determining the keys to effective posts estimates that interaction increases by 15 percent when you add a question at the end of a post — and you may even see twice the number of comments.
Ask for what you want. If you want someone to comment, to caption a picture, to share your post, to like your page, or to respond in another way, simply ask. The maker of the KitKat candy bar told its fans to share — and share they did, as shown in Figure 9-4. Be direct and ask for what you want your fans to do. They were already visiting, already ‘liking’ what they were reading or watching — you are simply asking them to say it out loud.
Ask your community to fill in the blank. Would you believe that you’re four times more likely to draw a response to your post by creating a fill-in-the-blank scenario? An example is a chocolatier asking fans to complete a sentence such as this one:
If I were a chocolate, ___ would be my flavor.
Filling in the blank would be fun for fans and an activity that they might like to share. Pair it with a mouth-watering photo of chocolates, and the company could have a viral post on its hands. Facebook users like to play games on Facebook — so let them do it on your page.
Run a contest. Get your fans involved by inviting them to participate in a giveaway, sweepstakes, or contest. See Figure 9-5 for a look at the Got Milk tablet giveaway in the Sack the Soda contest on its Facebook page.
Figure 9-4: Kit Kat’s request for shares of a simple picture was carried out more than 250 times.
Be careful about running contests on Facebook or you risk violating its terms of service. Facebook states that you must carry out contests on your page using a third-party solution. Popular tools include Wildfire (www.wildfireapp.com) for promotions and Rafflecopter (www.rafflecopter.com) for giveaways.
Figure 9-5: Fans followed the directions on the Got Milk page to enter a contest to win a tablet computer.
Promoting your business page with your personal Timeline
Naturally, your personal Timeline is a completely different animal from your Facebook page. Though your page is all-business-all-the-time, the Timeline has all your personal connections to friends, family, and interests. Some crossover likely occurs between the professional you and the personal you, but you need to decide how to handle that blurring line — and how often.
Determine whether and how you want to use your personal Timeline to promote your business page. Your personal Timeline can be an additional place to provide greater visibility to your business and potentially place your brand in front of a larger audience who may not have made the leap to like your business page.
Make the connection obvious between your personal Timeline and your business page by linking your personal Timeline to your professional page:
1. Click Update Info.
2. Click Edit Work and Education.
3. Type the name of your Facebook page.
The page name should show up along with other, similar ones.
4. Select the correct page name.
5. Click Done Editing.
6. Return to your personal Timeline page to confirm that the link has connected.
Use your personal Timeline to thoughtfully promote your page. Tag your page by using the @ sign and typing the name of your page, and then select your page so that the name becomes clickable (similar to the way you tag your friends).
From your Timeline, your friends can head over to your business page, if they’re interested, or even like the page without ever leaving your Timeline, because the Like button appears as soon as you hover the mouse over the link, as shown in Figure 9-6.
Figure 9-6: When you tag a business page, your friends can easily navigate to it.
Standing Out in the News Feed
In the grand field of Facebook content, it can feel like you’ve undertaken Mission Impossible to try to stand out in the crowd. The latest estimate from Facebook (late 2012) says that 2.5 billion pieces of content — pictures, status updates, and videos — are being shared every single day.
http://gigaom.com/2012/08/22/facebook-is-collecting-your-data-500-terabytes-a-day/
And, Facebook has adjusted its Pages algorithm so that businesses need to make even more of an effort to strive for visibility. (Talk about making messages multi-colored in a world of black-and-white!)
As we mention earlier in this chapter, you must consider your efforts on Facebook to be part of a long-term journey. A single post or a single status update doesn’t have the viral capability that a YouTube video might. In fact, more than 90 percent of the people who like your page initially don’t return to your page. It’s up to you to attract their attention in their News Feeds. It’s a combination of understanding Facebook’s EdgeRank, crafting the right kinds of posts, and playing all the right games to increase your noticeability.
Navigating EdgeRank
Quite simply, EdgeRank is the algorithm that determines what information appears in your Facebook News Feed. EdgeRank, naturally, ranks “the edge” that each piece of content — a picture, a video, a link, or a status update — has as it floats through the river of significant subject matter you may or may not want to see each and every day. The higher the EdgeRank, the more prominently placed your updates and content are in your fans’ daily feeds.
Three measurements make up the complex formula of EdgeRank: affinity which, in essence, is how often your content is liked, commented on, or shared; weight, which measures the quality of the engagement you receive — for example, ‘weighing’ comments as more important than likes; and time decay, which factors in how long your content has been online.
Your goal is to make Edge Rank work for you. You want Facebook to weigh your content as important enough to keep it regularly visible to your audience. This means you need to monitor if what you share is engaging enough to receive comments and likes.
The combination of affinity, weight, and time decay determines the EdgeRank of a Facebook brand or business page. The higher the EdgeRank, the greater the page’s visibility in fans’ news feeds.
Crafting engaging posts
To master EdgeRank, find a way to attract attention to your brand page and posts. Work your way into the hearts and heads of your community to secure a greater edge. Surprise them, inspire them, delight them, make them laugh, teach them something new — you can even shock them, if it’s appropriate. Find different ways to convince people that what you have to say is worth liking, commenting on, and (especially) sharing.
According to PageLever.com, your page posts reach, on any given day, only 3 percent to 7.5 percent of your fans. Though this number seems incredibly low, your priority is to increase the engagement from the fans who are seeing your content.
Think about how often you post. Too much engagement is the number-one reason that the people who have liked you decide to hide you from their News Feeds or, in some cases, to unlike your page. If your community or your fans hide your content, as shown in Figure 9-7, that action decreases your EdgeRank, making it even more challenging for you to continue to appear in the News Feeds of your remaining fans. On the flip side, if you post too infrequently, you’ll quickly be forgotten.
Figure 9-7: Click the arrow to the right of any post to hide that content from your feed.
Start slowly, posting from one to three times a day, and change the frequency depending on how much engagement you receive as you post. Consider people’s emotions when you craft posts each day. Keep in mind that pictures and text updates are the posts that garner the most engagement.
The best way to create an engaging post is to opt for emotion, but be brief. Inspire your community. Don’t be afraid to throw in elements of surprise (to keep them intrigued). Most important of all, write posts from your heart. You aren’t making a sales pitch or requesting your fans’ opinions. A simple statement describing how you feel at that moment humanizes your brand. When the fitness bar Zone Perfect did this at the end of 2012, it received positive fan reactions, as shown in Figure 9-8.
Sharing personal news and scenes from the real lives of the people behind your brand can often generate authentic reactions from your community. People love to know the names and faces of your brand representatives because it confirms that the reps are real people who are living real lives. Your brand becomes more relatable to your fans. The children’s clothing company Matilda Jane shared news of an employee’s new baby, as shown in Figure 9-9, and quickly received love and affection from the community on its Facebook page.
Figure 9-8: A simple congratulations from ZonePerfect was shared, commented on, and liked.
Figure 9-9: When baby Alys joined the Matilda Jane family, the company’s page received more than 500 likes and comments.
In addition to photo posts and video posts, you can post links and text-only status updates. Though the Facebook EdgeRank has placed a priority on the most visual posts, experiment to determine what your audience notices. Mixing the types of posts you publish can be effective in attracting attention.
Adding visual elements to draw instant attention
As we often say, if you want your posts to be seen in someone’s News Feed, use a visual of some kind. In some instances, Facebook and EdgeRank have crowned the photo post as the king of engagement, at least as far as pages are concerned.
According to the same study mentioned previously by Buddy Media (in the earlier section, “Increasing follower loyalty”), photo posts are 39 percent more likely to receive some level of interaction. Plain-text status updates come in second, followed (distantly) by video and links.
In essence, use a picture! Here are some ways to leverage the photo post:
Make basic photo posts. The basic photo post is the easiest to make and to recommend. Visually share highlights of what’s happening in your company’s world — whether a new product is launching soon, the people in your office are hard at work, or you’re showing scenes from a conference that you’re attending or the view outside your office door.
Run caption contests. Share any basic photos and ask your community to caption the photo for you. If possible, share the pictures that have the most personality. Now your photo has dual purposes: It has higher EdgeRank because it’s a photo, and your engagement should jump even more if people approve of the idea of offering the caption.
Ask for community pictures. Ask your community to send you pictures — preferably based on a theme that relates to your business. You can then share the pictures and tag the fans who submit them. (We talk more about tagging later in this chapter, in the section “Tagging photos and posts.”)
Create and share your own images. Create your own funny or inspirational photo to share. Use a personal photo combined with an inspirational quote, for example, or head to a site such as www.someecards.com for humor that's being shared. To avoid copyright issues, however, create your own brand of funny.
If you have a picture to share, use your favorite search engine to find a quote to accompany it — whether it's funny or inspirational. Then use a photo editing website such as PicMonkey (www.picmonkey.com) to add the text easily to the image without having to use an expensive photo editing program on your computer. Save the picture and post it on your Facebook page.
Reaching out to other pages
The last thing you want to do is spam someone, let alone other business pages; however, commenting thoughtfully on pages with similar interests can increase your own page engagement. The key is to find businesses that are complementary to (not competitive with) your own business and then like their pages while you’re using your business page (and not your personal account).
Interacting from your page on Facebook can be an effective and subtle way of gaining greater visibility and exposure to a new audience. When you’re using your Facebook business Page, regularly monitor your News Feed for the business pages you’ve liked for relevant content that you can like, share, or comment on. Your brand name then appears on the other business’ pages, so be intentional and thoughtful when you comment.
You don’t need to engage on other pages every single day, but add this task to your weekly rotation of engagement activities. If you have a team of people working on your brand, assign one person the responsibility of page-to-page engagement. The more visibility your page has, the more opportunities you create for liking and sharing.
Don’t do anything on someone else’s business page that you wouldn’t want them to do on yours, and don’t use a commercial tone to tell people to visit your page. Interact like a true fan, and be a good community member in their communities to gain exposure without offending anyone.
Determining post timing and frequency
Naturally, your head spins as you imagine all the factors you must consider as you craft your posts. You want them to be engaging. (Remember that visual posts are the key.) A bit of Goldilocks is hidden in this theory — not too much, not too little, but just right. Post too often and your community will run screaming from your content, unable to find the Hide Posts button quickly enough. Post once every few days and you will all but disappear from the News Feed.
Begin by posting once daily and work up to posting three or four times a day, depending, of course, on the amount of engagement you’re seeing from your fans. Additionally, monitor your analytics to track your engaged users. (We tell you more about analytics later in this chapter, in the section “Analyzing Facebook interactions”).
In order to maximize your time and keep up with the appropriate frequency for posting on Facebook, be succinct, post both during the week and on weekends to reach all of your fans, don’t rely on third-party apps alone to post your content as Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes manual posts, and do use full links when you post so your audience can see where they are heading.
Driving traffic to your page with cross-posting
Consider the importance of driving traffic to Facebook from other locations. For example, cross-post from Facebook to Twitter to let your Twitter audience know about your Facebook page. Follow these steps to find the specific URL for an individual Facebook post in order to post it in other locations.
1. Pick an individual post that you’ve already shared on Facebook.
2. Click the time stamp on that post.
You can find the stamp immediately under the name of your page, at the top of an individual post.
3. Find the URL.
When you click the time stamp, you can see the permanent link (every post has one) for that specific post.
4. Copy and paste that URL to Twitter.
5. Add some text to promote the post.
6. Click send.
Congratulations — you’ve promoted a specific post from your Facebook page on Twitter.
Leveraging the Advanced Features of Facebook
Simply hearing the word feature can make a person think extra. Using the extras that Facebook has made available to boost your business page is bound to make you and your brand stand up and stand out — assuming that you know how to make the best use of them. Fortunately, that’s why we’re here.
With new features continually being introduced (Graph Search and Facebook Gifts are the latest that come to mind), you have many opportunities to increase engagement: You can add apps to your Timeline or business Page, use your mobile device, embed social widgets for greater visibility, and even pay for advertising.
Tagging photos and posts
Epiphanie Bags created its Facebook business Page back in 2009. Now more than 42,000 likes strong, the page is decorated with photos of the brand’s key products — a line of camera photo bags. The kicker is that most of the pictures appearing on Epiphanie’s business Page aren’t ones shot by the brand but, rather, by customers and fans.
Inspire your customers to take their own pictures of your product and post them to your Facebook page, by way of a contest or simply by word of mouth. This is yet another way to encourage loyalty and engagement.
Typically, when a fan posts a picture and tags the brand by using the @ symbol (as is the case with Epiphanie), the photos appear not on the brand’s main page but rather on the right side of the page, under the Recent Posts by Others on Epiphanie. However, Epiphanie doubles up on engagement, showing off to their entire audience the pictures their fans have taken, by reposting the pictures in their main News Feed and tagging the fan, as shown in Figure 9-10. Fans are rewarded for posting great-looking photos on their Timelines, and more people then engage in this activity to get the same recognition.
Epiphanie also shares posts from other blogs that talk about their bags. By doing this, they show extra appreciation to their fans, they share the kind of content (photos) that the Facebook EdgeRank algorithm focuses on, and they showcase their own product. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
Scheduling posts for the greatest impact
We recommend that you’re as present and as engaged with your audience as possible — you must therefore be diligent about any decisions to schedule posts on your Facebook page.
Scheduling can be a good option to relieve the extra pressure of posting frequently, and it can encourage you to post consistently. Using the built-in scheduling option in Facebook can help ensure that your EdgeRank isn’t negatively affected by using third-party apps to schedule your posts.
Figure 9-10: By calling out customer photos, Epiphanie carries them to the main page and to the News Feed.
Here’s how to schedule a post using the Facebook scheduler:
1. Fill in your post as you normally do, including text, links, photos, or videos.
2. In the lower-left corner of the Update field, click on the tiny gray clock.
The clock feature lets you schedule, or even backdate, your post starting with the year.
3. Enter the year, month, day, hour, and minutes — in 10-minute intervals — when you want the update to post.
See Figure 9-11 for an example.
Figure 9-11: Adjusting the time that you want a scheduled post to appear.
4. Click Schedule.
Your post is added to the activity log — which shows you all activity that has happened or is set to happen on your page. To check your scheduled posts, choose Edit Page at the very top of your page and then Activity Log — you’ll see scheduled posts and the dates and times that they’ll be posted.
Your post appears seamlessly on your page at the scheduled time. If you need to edit the post after it has been scheduled, you can go to the activity log by clicking on Edit Page at the very top of your page. The only setting you can adjust is the time that your post is set to “go live.” You can change the time by clicking on the arrow in the top-right corner of your scheduled post. If you suddenly notice a misspelling, for example, you have to delete the post and start the process over again.
Optimizing your page for search engines
When you’re trying to draw people to your Facebook page by creating amazing and engaging content, remember that a large percentage of the basic traffic you see on your site is based on good, old-fashioned search — that is, people find you based on what they type into a search engine. Your Facebook page should be optimized so that search engines can easily find you, a process called search engine optimization. In case you’ve neglected a few basic principles while getting your page up and running, go back now and edit the following items to get more search bang for your buck:
Choose a strong name. It’s basic advice, yet you can easily choose the wrong name. Picking a name that’s too generic makes it difficult to be found, just as choosing one that’s too wordy (such as Tom’s Sporting Goods — Football, Hockey, Baseball, Golf, and More!) can make your fans less likely to share your posts because it feels “too spammy.”
Google assigns the greatest importance to the first word in the title of your Facebook business page, so choose wisely.
Create a customized vanity URL. After you have attracted at least 25 likes on your page, Facebook lets you choose your own, custom URL. As when you choose your brand name, choose wisely. If your business name has been taken, pick a name that indicates what your business is about. Go to http://facebook.com/username to select your page name, and carefully select your business page versus your personal Timeline.
Use keywords carefully. Use keywords throughout your page, especially in permanent areas such as About Page, Company Overview, and Mission. All three of these content areas are indexed for search, meaning that Google crawls or searches these pages for a way to identify you and allow your audience to find you.
Link liberally. Link to your Facebook page from as many of your online social media platforms as possible, such as your website and blogs. Google places more importance on pages that have a greater number of inbound links.
Add local information. It may seem silly to list your address and phone number when many of your sales may originate from online traffic, but it’s still wise to make yourself available for local search results.
Addresses and phone numbers can increase the overall SEO of a site because Google indexes sites with specific information at a higher priority. Google refers to this information as NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) data.
If you have restricted your page access in any way (such as a liquor company restricting access by age or a company restricting geographical access, to visitors only from the United States), your page won’t be seen by members of the general public on the web who aren’t logged in to their Facebook accounts.
If Facebook cannot verify the age or location or other restriction criteria, a person not logged in to Facebook always arrives at the Facebook home page and is prompted to log in. Your page isn’t visible to them until they’re logged in — and only if they meet the criteria based on the restrictions you set.
Graph Search
As of this writing, Graph Search isn’t available to all users or in languages other than English, but it does have the potential to change the game for small businesses. With its ability to hyper-search users based on interests, locations, and pages ‘liked’, businesses will be able to assess the fans of their competition: Who loves Nike in Dallas? Are they female or male? In their 30’s or 40’s? Avid runners or new to the sport? Additionally, Graph Search enables businesses to develop deeper connections with those fans who have liked their brands because they are true fans as compared to having a momentary interest.
Graph Search allows you to search by friends, photos, games, or restaurants, and narrow your hunt very specifically. Figure 9-12 shows how Graph Search’s algorithm instantly populated sample searches for Danielle based on her interests and where she lives.
Figure 9-12: An instantly populated sample search.
Advertising on Facebook
You may want to see more interaction with your fan base — and see it now. One quick and efficient way to make it happen is to explore the Facebook advertising options. You’ve likely been wringing your hands and working tirelessly to build your community in a completely organic fashion. If it’s working beautifully, by all means, keep it up; if you’re looking for a boost, however, the ad choices that Facebook presents just might be the route to take.
If you have 100 or more fans, you can pay to promote your posts or create specialized offers or discounts on products and services for your audience. The barrier for entry used to be 400 likes, but that number changed in January 2013.
A promoted post is more visible in the News Feed, making it easier for your audience to see. You can easily promote a post by clicking the Promote button underneath your status update. Facebook offers you a budget — usually beginning at $5 — and tells you, based on that amount, how many people you can expect to reach. You can choose to increase the budget, if you want.
Let’s take a look at the more advanced ad options:
1. Head to www.facebook.com/advertising.
2. Assuming that you already have a Facebook page in place, click Create an Ad.
At this point, Facebook asks what you want to advertise. You can see whether it will populate any pages you might have, so you can easily click on those — or enter a specific URL if you’re choosing to advertise an event, a website, or a destination outside of your Facebook pages.
3. Choose your goal.
You may be looking to grow your audience by increasing the number of people who like your page, to ensure that your community sees the content you’re sharing, to promote a specific post, or to explore additional advanced options.
4. Create the ad.
Fill in the headline and text for the ad, and choose a picture or an avatar to accompany it.
5. Target your audience.
You can choose who you want to see your ad by state, age, or interest or by broad categories such as family status, DIY/crafting, or gaming.
6. Set your price.
Ah, yes — the final step concerns how much it costs. The beauty of this step is that you get to decide how much you’re willing to invest or budget. Facebook makes recommendations, but, ultimately, you decide. The amount that’s set is based on the cost per mille (CPM), or cost per million impressions. If you switch to the Advanced Pricing option, you can choose to be charged instead on cost per click. In this case, you can also set the budget.
The lowest bid available for cost per click (CPC) is one cent (.01); however, Facebook warns that choosing an amount this low isn’t likely enough for your ad or sponsored story to be seen. Choose an amount in the suggested range.
Jen Estes owns Manestream Studio, a full-service hair salon in St. Charles, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. In making an effort to increase engagement on their Facebook page, Manestream changed the way they communicate with their fan base, by increasing the number of posts, offering incentives, and setting an advertising budget.
In one of Manstream’s first advertisements, they doubled up on their engagement by offering a discount within the ad. In Figure 9-13, you can see the spike in their visibility and engagement in their statistics from the beginning of January 2013. In the first series of sponsored posts, the number of likes they received increased by 12 percent, the number of people under the People Talking about This link increased by more than 400 percent, and their total weekly reach (the biggest jump) was more than 1300 percent.
Figure 9-13: Use Facebook’s analytics to monitor your engagement.
When you purchase ads on Facebook, you have the option to select mobile-only options to make your ad show up only when someone accesses Facebook from a mobile device.
Embedding social widgets
Knowledge is power. Your goal is to make your business page known to others so that they find it, like it, and engage with you there or by way of your posts. As surprising as it may seem, some people don’t automatically assume that you have a Facebook presence, and still others may assume that you do but not take the time to look for you.
By integrating Facebook directly into your website, you drive traffic to your page. If you make this process easy by embedding a Facebook social widget (as Amy Porterfield did, as shown in Figure 9-14), people who already know and like you (they’re visiting your website and other social platforms, after all) are more likely to click the Like button to show your updates in their News Feeds or to scoot over to your page to explore how you engage with your audience.
Figure 9-14: This page has a widget that tallies the number of times someone has clicked the Like button.
For a simpler option, you can choose to simply add the Facebook Like button, as Diet Pepsi has done, which encourages fans to like the page, as shown in Figure 9-15. The Diet Pepsi Facebook Like button tells potential visitors how many other fans have liked the page (more than 700,000), and the widget is grouped with other SME options, such as Twitter and Pinterest.
Figure 9-15: A social widget encourages fans to follow the brand.
To embed a widget in Facebook, follow these steps:
1. Go to the Facebook Developers page (https://developers.facebook.com).
You can select widget options that work well for you and your website.
2. From the site, choose Web (on the right side) to integrate Facebook with your website.
3. Click the first option: Integrate with your website.
4. On the left side, click the Core Concepts link.
5. Click Social Plug-ins to see your options.
6. Choose the social plug-in that makes the most sense for your website.
See Figure 9-16 for some options.
Figure 9-16: Choose a social plug-in.
7. Fill in the specific URL, adjust the sizing (if necessary) to fit in the sidebar, and click Get Code.
See Figure 9-17 for some sample code. For the Like button, you populate the fields to see a sample of the widget before placing the code on your site.
Figure 9-17: Some sample code.
8. Place the HTML code wherever you want to place the widget, such as on your website’s sidebar.
Analyzing Facebook interactions
You may have invested hours, days, or even weeks planning your Facebook page strategy, and then implementing it and (you hope) watching your community begin to grow. The key is to pay attention to the correct metrics, to ensure that you’re doing more of the activities that help you progress and cut back on any activities that might stunt your social media growth.
Facebook keeps track of in-depth analytics for you — in a comprehensive way — and makes them available to anyone who is an administrator of your Facebook page. The public cannot see these details — only administrators have access to Facebook Insights. Your analytics include not only how many people are engaging with your content but who they are, where they live, how old they are, and what content grabbed their attention the most.
You can access Facebook Insights from the top-center of your page, in the Admin panel. Facebook curates — and displays in Facebook Insights — valuable data about your audience and your content, and how the two engage together. The three primary measurement categories are
Reach: The number of fans who see your posts
Engaged Users: The number of fans who engage with your content by clicking on it
Talking About This: The number of fans who engage with you or your content by commenting on it or liking or sharing it
To become more efficient with your time and energy, you need to understand where your platform is succeeding and which areas of it might still need work. Facebook Insights can help you do that.
Set aside time weekly or biweekly to understand what is working for your Facebook page and to determine which parts need adjustments from day to day. Conduct a monthly analysis of your progress based on your Facebook Insights to see the big-picture view of what’s working and what isn’t.