Tuesday 1 December 2015

Facebook Updates That are Great for Businesses

Think about it: If you’re targeting a subgroup, the more interests you add – the audience size should get smaller. define social media marketing It doesn’t. The more interests you add, the larger your audience gets.Facebook hides this little fact from most of its documentation. When selecting interests, you are using an “OR” variable. In the example above, we’re targeting runners OR fans of technology. We are not targeting “People who are runners AND like technology readers.”So how can you improve your targeting, zooming to the audience you truly want to target?The first is the segmentation of your campaigns. In this example we’ve been using, you would create one campaign targeting “surfers” and another targeting “technology.” It’s not perfect, but the goal here is to determine which interest is more profitable for you and optimize accordingly.The second way to serve ads to the audience you intend is to use the Facebook Ads API.If you’re not a developer, have no fear. There are many applications that handle this for you. Ad Espresso and Qwaya are two of the big names in this space. At Search Scientists, we use Ad Espresso, and it allows us to hit the center of the Venn Diagram for our clients. See in the example above, I’m using the “and” variable. This time, I’m targeting people who are interested in running AND technology.This time, when I enter all of those extra targeting methods, my audience zooms into the smallest level, only 6,000 users.
If you're only posting photos and videos, you may notice a decline in your Facebook reach and engagement. social media marketing plan pdf While photos and videos are proven to be the most engaging content formats on Facebook, too much of a good thing can be bad for your Facebook Page. So try switching up the type of content you share to increase the chance your audience sees them -- share links to articles, post offers, etc.Just be sure the content you share is optimized for Facebook sharing. For example, knowing Facebook will also pull in images associated with the links you share, make sure the images used in the content of the links you're sharing are optimized for the ideal Facebook dimensions; otherwise, the shared link won't show up as prominently on your Timeline or in the News Feed. See how the update on the left displays much more prominently that the update on the right? Both are link updates, but the one on the left is associated with an image greater than 600 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. Aim for those minimum image dimensions in your content to be sure links to yout content are optimized when shared on Facebook by you or other Facebook users.Even if one of your main goals is to generate leads from Facebook, you shouldn't use every update to promote lead-gen offers like webinars, ebooks, premium downloads, etc. Make sure you have a healthy balance of lead-gen posts and content meant for engagement alone you'll get more people interacting with your page (which means you'll have a better chance of showing up in the News Feed later on), and you'll have a better chance of growing your Facebook fan base. That way, when you do publish lead-gen content, it'll get exposed to a much bigger audience.

Optimize the descriptions of your profile picture and cover photo by adding links

Depending on your goals for using Facebook, you may want to consider including links to your website in the descriptions for your profile picture and cover photo. social media marketing best practicesWhether it's to a blog post, a piece of lead-gen content, or just an "About Us" page, links are opportunities for interested folks to get to know your company better, and the descriptions of your profile picture and cover photo are prime real estate to do it.If you decide to add links to the descriptions of these two photos, make sure they are shortened links with UTM parameters attached to them -- that way, you know if they're working or not. Why photos and videos? Because they're proven to be the most engaging types of content on Facebook, according to a study conducted by Quintly. The other reason posting these types of updates are important is because you'll want your 'Photos' and 'Videos' apps -- which are apps automatically added to every Facebook Page to actually be populated with photos and videos.Maximize your Facebook juice right from the start! Make sure the multimedia content you post is the correct size by checking out this social media dimensions infographic. For any updates that contain links, be sure to place the link before the end of the fifth line of text -- that's where Facebook will truncate it and add a "see more" tag. This way, your fans won't have to click "see more" in order to access your call-to-action.
Don't forget about one of the most important sections of all: your 'About' section. A preview of it lives on the left-hand side of your page beneath your profile picture, how to start a social media marketing business and it's one of the first places people will look when they're scanning your page. Visitors can also navigate to your full 'About' section by clicking on the tab at the top of your page.Be sure to optimize the 'About' section on the left side of your page with brief yet descriptive copy -- by doing so, potential fans can get a sense of what your page is about before they decide to Like you. This copy will get pulled from the 'Short Description' you provide within your full 'About' tab. To edit your full 'About' tab, click on it, hover over the section you'd like to edit, and click the pencil icon. You should also consider populating the 'Milestones' section of your 'About' tab with noteworthy company milestones -- for instance, the day/year your company was founded, when you launched popular products, or when you hosted major events. To add milestones, click on the 'Timeline' section of your page, and click the 'Offer, Event +' option in the page update composer near the top of your page. An important consideration in your Facebook content strategy should be how frequently you post, and when. This is important to think about because it will affect how successful your page is in the long run.

ntegrate your profile picture with your cover photo

If you want to get extra creative and feel confident about your design skills, try coordinating your profile picture and your cover photo in a creative way. how to social media marketing Back in December 2014, Facebook launched a new feature that allows you to add one of seven pre-made call-to-action buttons to your Facebook Page's cover photo. Pages can choose from one of the following options -- "Sign Up," "Shop Now," "Contact Us," "Book Now," "Use App," "Watch Video," and "Play Game" and customize it with a destination URL of their choosing. This is a great way for marketers to drive traffic from their Facebook Business Page back to their website.Another smart way to use these calls-to-action is to integrate your Facebook cover photo with your CTA button. Check out how we previously integrated the "Sign Up" button with a cover photo we used on HubSpot's page to promote.To add a call-to-action button to your cover photo, click the 'Create Call-to-Action' button located on your cover photo. You'll then be able to choose the button copy you want and specify the URL you want to direct visitors to. To get data on how many people are clicking your button, simply click the drop-down arrow on your button and select 'View Insights.'See those tabs under the cover photo on HubSpot's Facebook Page, pictured below? Those are apps you can add to your Facebook Page as one way to customize it. Once you've added apps, you can also rearrange the order in which they appear at the top of your page.
Because this particular page published too many updates in short timeframe, Facebook's algorithm grouped them together, rendering the hidden post near-useless. social media marketing 2014 Prevent this from happening by thinking about when your audience will be on Facebook, experimenting with different posting frequencies and timing, checking the performance of your updates in your Facebook Insights (which you can navigate to via the tab at the very top of your page), and then tailoring your posting strategy accordingly. Choose the most engaging or important apps out of all the ones you've enabled on your page to appear in the top row. You can do so by clicking the 'More' dropdown, selecting 'Manage Tabs,' and then dragging and dropping your apps to rearrange the order of your tabs. Facebook will automatically show your 'Timeline' and 'About' tabs first, but you can select two more apps to show up primarily in your tabs section. Everything else will fall under the 'More' dropdown. To help you figure out your ideal publishing timing and frequency, we've also researched some social media frequency benchmarks in our 2015 Social Media Benchmarks Report.Did you know you could schedule posts on Facebook, either through an external publishing tool like HubSpot's Social Inbox, or through the Facebook interface itself? Scheduling posts allows you to save time on social media community management and help you balance the types of content you share.

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