Even though Facebook is the biggest social media player in the global game, it hasn’t waded far into the world of blogs. Its Notes feature was, basically, a plain page on which users could write a simple note. That didn’t leave a lot of room for people who wanted to say more on Facebook about certain topics.

But with the release of the new Facebook Notes, you will find that can give you a more robust Facebook experience as well as a new aspect to your social media presence.

Facebook Notes started out primarily as long-form versions of Facebook posts. Through this platform, users could also post lists, quizzes and more. The Notes, which were limited both in creativity and scope, did not catch on in a widespread manner, and over time the feature dwindled.

Notes Can Help Companies Thrive
Social media marketing is a general boon for businesses, and the revamped Notes are no exception. Companies can get the word out on their products and services, provide news and observations, and more by utilizing Facebook Notes’ exciting new features such as adding cover photos, sizing photos, adding captions, and formatting text using bullet points, headers and quotes.

When it comes to Facebook, leave no stone unturned. Facebook Notes should be one of the tools you use to .

Dual-Purpose Blogging
While you may already have an established blog, you can take your blogging a step further by promoting and previewing your blog content with a Facebook Note. This increased exposure to your blog content will simultaneously grow your Facebook reach.

A Facebook Note can also give your followers a quick update on a project, details for a contest, or the schedule for an upcoming conference you’re hosting or participating in. These notes can be important companions to regular Facebook posts and photos.

While Facebook Notes can resemble blog posts, it’s important to remember that Facebook could decide to pull Notes if its re-launch is ultimately less successful than it appears to be today. And, it’s important to remember that Notes doesn’t reduce the need for a blog on your own website, where you are able to build valuable online exposure, utilize calls to action, and track readers’ habits and interests of all your online offerings.

Pages Are Different
Many of the changes in Facebook Notes will be experienced by individual users. Facebook Pages can use Notes as well, but the changes for Notes within Pages are less robust. The end result is similar, though. Facebook Notes on Facebook Pages also will be available to anyone on Facebook, while your individual Notes will only be visible to the people you’ve friended or become friends with on Facebook.

Regardless of how you use the repurposed Facebook Notes, you have the opportunity to tap into a creative gold mine.

The post Facebook Notes: They’re Back, and They’re Better for Business appeared first on ¶¶Ňń¶ĚĘÓƵ.

A Quick Review

In this series you’ve learned how to create your first Facebook ad; how to come up with a can’t-miss free giveaway offer and how to convert Facebook fans who want this offer into prospects. Now it’s time to create your first Facebook ad campaign.

Let’s good started…

Use Facebook’s Power Editor

Facebook’s Google Chrome®-based plug-in is recommended for business users because it offers more advantages than the regular Ads Manager. To access Power Editor, point your Google Chrome browser to:

Here are three reasons why Power Editor is the preferred Facebook ad management tool:

1. It offers better control for targeting the right audience for your business.
2. Power Editor gives you more control with ad bidding.
3. It provides more options for ad placement.

Facebook Campaigns

Campaigns help you organize and measure your Facebook ads. Campaigns also help you leverage Facebook advertising by:

1. Creating separate advertising objectives for separate campaigns and then measuring those results against each other to see which objective works best for your business or offer.

   For example, you could create three separate campaigns with a different objective for each one. After the campaigns run, you can compare the results from the different objectives and determine which one is best. Objectives include:

• Page Post Engagement
• Page Likes
• Clicks to Website
• Website Conversions
• App Installs
• App Engagement
• Event Responses
• Offer Claims
• Video Views
2. Creating different ads for different audience types so you can determine which audience is the most responsive to your offer, service or product. The three most common audience types are Demographic Audiences, Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.
• Demographic Audiences is one you define by location, gender, age, interest and behaviors.
• Custom Audiences is an audience you can define by using customer email addresses or telephone numbers.
• Lookalike Audiences is an audience that has the same attributes as your custom audiences – meaning it’s an audience that looks like your best customers.
3. Testing ads to identify which ads perform best. You can test different images, text, links, videos and CTAs (call to actions).

There are three components to a Facebook campaign (see the above image):

1. Campaign. Choose an objective (refer to the list of objectives above), which is what you want to accomplish. For example: Do you want to drive traffic to your traffic, or do you want to promote a video? Be sure each campaign has a unique, but relevant name.
2. Ad Set. Choose when you want the ad(s) to run, how much you want to spend, define audience targeting and placement (news feed, sidebar or mobile).
3. Ad. Choose what people will see. This includes images, videos, text, links and CTAs (calls to action).

Check out this video for more help on how to create a successful Facebook Campaign.

Campaign Checklist

Do this first

• Determine an objective for your campaign. Do you want web traffic, leads or event registrations?

Set up your Campaign

• Name your campaign
• Choose your objective

Create your Ad Sets

• Name your Ad Set
• Determine your budget
• Set start and end times for your campaign

Set your Ads

• Be sure to select the Create Ad (“+”) button
• Name your ad
• Select the Facebook Page associated with your business
• Enable conversion tracking (look for more details in part 6 of this series)
• Choose your placement (News Feed is recommended for optimal exposure)

Select your audience

• What locations do you want to target?
• What ages and gender do you want to target?

Determine your pricing

• Decide if you want to use Facebook CPC (cost per click), CRM (cost per 1,000 impressions) or Optimize CPM (recommended).

Upload your campaign

• Be sure to select “Upload Changes” so Facebook can approve and show your campaign.

This is an four-part roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-ready-to learn-series. Each how-to post is intended to give you specific actions so you can use Facebook to grow your business beginning today. Here’s what you can expect to learn over the next several weeks.

• Part One: How to Create a Free Giveaway that Facebook Fans will Love
• Park Two: How to Convert Facebook Fans into Prospects
• Part Three: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad
• Part Four: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign

Need Facebook Marketing training right now? Please contact us to schedule a free consultation.

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A Quick Review
Now that you have your can’t-miss free giveaway offer and a plan to convert Facebook fans who want this offer into prospects and then customers, it’s time to create a compelling Facebook post, which can be turned into a Facebook ad later.

Let’s get started…

Test It!
The best way to create a great Facebook ad is by creating a great Facebook post first. People don’t come to Facebook looking to buy something. Instead, most folks want to see posts that are visually rich and add value.

By creating a Facebook post first allows you to test the engagement effectiveness of the content before spending money on an ad. Meaning, if people are Liking, sharing and commenting, you probably have a good candidate for a Facebook ad on your hands. If there’s no activity on the post, you may want to go back to the drawing board.

Six Characteristics of a Good Facebook Post
Start here for creating a post:

1. Use an image. According to , posts with a single image drive 120% more engagement than a post without an image. Including a photo album increases post engagement by 180%.
2. Focus on them. Make the post content about them, the Facebook users, your audience, not you.
3. Keep it short. Posts with around 80 characters perform best. If you can’t get your message across in 80 characters, then 250 characters (about two lines of text) is the maximum for optimal engagement. However, when converting post into an ad, there are character limitations which are referenced below.
4. Be specific and actionable. In other words, what do you want the person to do after reading your post – click a link or the Learn More button?
5. Ask, don’t tell. Should, would, which and who questions tend to get the most response.
6. Write like a real person. Write the content like you are talking to a good friend.

Examples of Good Facebook Posts
Keeping the six characteristics in mind, check out these Facebook posts.

Example #1

Example #2

Example #3

Image Guidelines
Now that you know that a good image can increase your Facebook post’s engagement, follow these guidelines to make certain you are using images properly:

• Use images with people, not just objects.
• Find images with bright colors.
• Image upload size should be 1200 x 628 pixels. If the image size is smaller than 470 x 246, the image will appear as a thumbnail in the post or ad.
• There’s also a 20% text limit on an image that’s used as an ad. This means that on-image text can’t cover more than 20% of the image. Facebook enforces this to discourage images from becoming banner ads. To help you determine the text coverage on an image, Facebook has created a free and easy tool to use –

Text Guidelines
There are four text areas on a Facebook post:

1. Text: This is the copy that appears above the image for desktop and mobile users and under the headline when the post is converted to an ad and is placed in the right column (sidebar). As noted earlier, the best practice is to keep this copy short. If you plan to convert the post to an ad, maximum number of characters for the Text area can’t exceed 90.
2. Headline. This is the larger text that appears directly below the ad for desktop and mobile users. When converted to an ad, the maximum number of characters is 25.
3. News Feed Link Description. As the name indicates, this text only appears in News Feed ads. The maximum number of characters is 200. The Link Description area is available in Posts, so use it as way to communication more information about your product, service or organization.
4. URL. This is the name you want give to your URL, which appears under the image. If you are linking to a URL with a long string of characters, considering shortening the URL into something more concise and branded.

This is an four-part roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-ready-to learn-series. Each how-to post is intended to give you specific actions so you can use Facebook to grow your business beginning today. Here’s what you can expect to learn over the next several weeks.

• Part One: How to Create a Free Giveaway that Facebook Fans will Love
• Park Two: How to Convert Facebook Fans into Prospects
• Part Three: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad
• Part Four: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign

Need Facebook Marketing training right now? Please contact us to schedule a free consultation.

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A Quick Review
Last week the power of Facebook marketing was revealed: Don’t sell directly on Facebook; but use Facebook as a way to attract the right people – the right prospects – to your product or service so they can better understand the value you provide.

This strategy is accomplished by offering something for free – a giveaway so relevant, desirable and value-packed that it will hard for someone to resist it such as an eBook, a recorded webinar or an invitation to a live event.

After deciding on your free giveaway, the next step is to have the right tools in place so you can convert Facebook Fans into prospects.

Understanding Prospect Conversion Workflow
Before picking up the first tool, the best place to start is to understand the conversion workflow – meaning how a Facebook user becomes your prospect. Here’s how it works:

• Step One: Create the free giveaway offer
• Step Two: Build a landing page that features the giveaway along with the ability for the visitor to submit their name and email address to receive the giveaway.
• Step Three: Write a series of emails to send to the people who visited the landing page.
• Step Four: Create a Facebook Ad, which takes the person from Facebook to your landing page (creating a Facebook ad is the topic for the next post in this series!)
• Step Five: Measure results.

What Makes a Good Landing Page?
A landing page is designed to capture your visitors’ attention by providing information specific to their needs – like your free giveaway offer. Unlike your home page, where the purpose is to inform, the primary goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into prospects and then to customers, members or subscribers.

Question: So, what makes a good landing page? Answer: One that makes visitors want to learn more about your free giveaway, product or service and, hopefully, provide their name and email so you have the opportunity to keep in touch.

Here are the essentials to follow when creating a landing page:

• Remember the basics. Include an information request form on the page that visitors can use to submit their name and contact information, enabling you to follow up with them.
• Make sure your headline is interesting and compelling. It’s just a few words, but your title is what grabs a reader’s interest from the moment they land on your site. It should make visitors want to read more, so make it concise yet snappy.
• Make it scannable. Let’s face it: most people today want what they want, and they want it fast. Ensure them your site and its content are interesting by sprinkling your copy with subheads using a series of tags of varying sizes to divide copy into an outline-like form.
• Include only high-quality, on-topic content. Cut out the fluff and stay focused. Keep keyword use natural and don’t just churn out inferior copy to keep your site “updated.” Make sure the content hits on all the pain points that will demonstrate how receiving the free giveaway will help the visitor in some meaningful way.
• Make it easy to share and socialize. Include links to all the social sites in which you participate. Not only does this step aid in SEO, it also makes it easy for your visitors to share with their friends, family and colleagues so you can expand your reach without lifting a virtual finger.

Need some landing page design inspiration? .

Automated Email Follow-Up
By creating an email automation workflow, provided by a solutions provider such as , you have the ability to stay connected with your prospects. After visiting your landing page and submitting their name and email address, you can now put the prospect into your email automation workflow, which is a series of emails sent in two- or three-day intervals:

Email #1

• Thank the person for visiting your landing page or website.
• Provide the free giveaway offer, which can be a link to a PDF, online video, etc.
• Announce the paid service, product or program – let them know what it is and how to get it.
• Create a sense of urgency by offering a special price for a limited time.

Email #2

• Answer frequently asked questions about your paid service, product or program, which is a good way to talk about the value of what you’re selling and handling common objections.
• Remind your prospect about the deadline to receive the special price
• Provide a customer testimonial

Email #3

• Inform your prospect that now is the time to act
• Provide a bonus for acting now

Putting It All Together
Now that you have decided on your free giveaway offer, created a landing page as a way for people to request your offer, and have an automated email series ready to go that will help convert the prospects into customers, you are ready to create your first Facebook ad.

This is an four-part roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-ready-to learn-series. Each how-to post is intended to give you specific actions so you can use Facebook to grow your business beginning today. Here’s what you can expect to learn over the next several weeks.

• Part One: How to Create a Free Giveaway that Facebook Fans will Love
• Park Two: How to Convert Facebook Fans into Prospects
• Part Three: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad
• Part Four: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign

Need Facebook Marketing training right now? Please contact us to schedule a free consultation.

The post How to Convert Facebook Fans into Prospects appeared first on ¶¶Ňń¶ĚĘÓƵ.

Why Facebook Marketing?
If your business or organization needs a steady flow of targeted, interested and motivated customers and prospects to grow, then Facebook may be the right marketing tool for you.

Leveraging Facebook’s robust audience targeting capability along with its sophisticated, but easy-to-use, ad creation and measurement tools, will help you reach the people who matter most to your business. Plus, you only pay for the audience you want to reach and actions you want them to take.

So, whether you are an executive director of an association or a magazine publisher, this Facebook Marketing blog series will help you better understand how to take advantage of Facebook’s rich advertising features like Power Editor to micro target new customers, members or subscribers by using the data you have for existing members or customers. No other marketing tool can deliver such powerful reach at such an affordable cost.

This is an four-part roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-ready-to learn-series. Each how-to post is intended to give you specific actions so you can use Facebook to grow your business beginning today. Here’s what you can expect to learn over the next several weeks.

• Part One: How to Create a Free Giveaway that Facebook Fans will Love
• Park Two: How to Convert Facebook Fans into Prospects
• Part Three: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad
• Part Four: How to Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign

Need Facebook Marketing training right now? Please contact us to schedule a free consultation.

Create the Hub
Before getting started with learning how Facebook can help you grow, be sure that your business or organization has a Facebook business page, which is the hub for Facebook marketing. Having a Facebook Page makes your business:

• Discoverable: When people search for you on Facebook, they’ll be able to find you by reaching your business page.
• Connected: Engage with your customers, who can like your Page, read your posts and share them with friends.
• Relevant: Your Page can help you reach large groups of people, with messages specific to their needs and interests.
• Smarter: Page Analytics will give you a deeper understanding of your customers and your marketing activities – what they like and share with others.

To create your Facebook Page, .

Show Value First
The primary strategy for effective Facebook marketing isn’t to use the social media platform as a way to sell directly to people, but to use Facebook as a way to attract the right people – the right prospects – to your product or service so they can better understand the value you provide.

After experiencing the value your company provides, Facebook users will be more likely to become your customer. So, before creating your first Facebook ad, the first thing to consider is what you can provide for free. Make sure the giveaway is so relevant, desirable, and value-packed that it will hard for someone to resist it.

The Anatomy of a Can’t-Resist Free Giveaway
Your free giveaway offer needs to solve a problem in easy-to-follow and actionable steps. Additionally, put together a giveaway so irresistible that people would be willing to pay for it. The giveaway’s goal is to make it attractive enough that Facebook users will gladly provide their contact information (name and email address, for example) to receive it.

Once you have names and email addresses, you can then begin sharing your company’s products and services, which will give you the opportunity to generate revenue later in the sales process (this strategy is the topic of the next blog post in this series).

Your free giveaway can be packaged up in different ways. These are the most common ways to deliver your free content:

1. Audio file of a presentation
2. Video of a recorded webinar or presentation
3. One-on-one training call
4. Free business analysis or assessment
5. Coupon or discount code
6. eBook
7. Email series
8. Invitation to a live event
9. Workbook
10. Fast start guide

Next, finding the perfect can’t-resist giveaway is simple. Here are some ideas:

• Look at your best-performing website article or blog posts for eBook or webinar content ideas. To do this, review your website’s site analytics to determine what content is being viewed most often. When reviewing this information, think about how you could group several posts together. This strategy is a good way to create an eBook without having to write it from scratch.
• Ask your customers via social media what they value most from your business or organization. Facebook and Twitter make this easy and highly visible. Consider posting a question as simple as: If you could receive something for free from [your business name] what would it be? Also look at what social media content is receiving the most engagement. Posts that receive several Likes or Retweets are a sign that the content resonates with your target audience.
• What questions do your customers ask most often and then consider how you could provide the answers for free. Take a look at your customer service call logs or database to determine what questions are asked frequently.

The Most Important Ingredient
The most important ingredient in determining the best free giveaway your business can offer is to make certain the free giveaway is aligned with what you plan to offer as a paid service, product or program.

For example, if you are a relator, consider offering a free guide on how to prepare a house before it goes on the market, or if you are a magazine publisher you could give away a past issue or app version of your magazine.

Need more ideas? Check out these successful Facebook free giveaway offers:

Giveaway Example #1

Giveaway Example #2

Giveaway Example #3

Giveaway Example #4

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