Building a social media audience is not an easy task. It takes dedicated time to find fans and followers and even more time to experiment with sharing the right types of content that will earn Likes, RTs and +1s.
With social media, one size does not fit all. Every platform has different strengths and weaknesses and audience building tactics that work well on Facebook, for example, may not work on Twitter, and vice versa.
Below are tips for building an audience on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Best Practices for Building an Audience on Facebook
Best For: engaging on a more personal level, communities, causes.
Content to Share: videos, photos, blog posts, events, campaigns, ask questions, ask for likes and opinions.
Tip #2: Growing your Facebook fan base increases interactions. Facebook ads are one way to promote your Page to potential fans as well as to friends of your fans.
Tip #3:Facebook insights can help you understand who your audience is and what they are engaging with on your page.
Best Practices for Building an Audience on Twitter
Best For: updates, news, customer service, answering questions, finding people and subjects of interest to follow, conferences.
Content to Share: news, articles and links to content relevant to your audience, hashtags.
Successful Facebook marketing involves connecting with fans of your Page. This requires posting regularly to your Facebook Page with relevant and interesting content that engages your fans and results in interactions such as likes, comments and shares.
When determining what content is the most relevant and engaging, understand your Facebook Insights to identify what types of content gets the most interactions.
In addition to interacting with your fans, successful Facebook marketing also involves continually building up your Facebook fan base. Facebook marketing is similar to email marketing in that growing your email list affects open rates. Here growing your Facebook fan base increases interactions, and Facebook ads are one way to promote your Page to potential fans as well as to friends of your fans.
As part of your Facebook advertising strategy, you want to:
Use Facebook Ads to build up your fan base.
Once you have fans, use Sponsored Stories to reach and influence friends of your fans.
What Are Facebook Ads?
There are 2 types of Facebook ads:
Standard Ad
Page Post Ad
With Standard ads, you create the body copy and set the destination URL—this can be your Facebook page, a Facebook app or an external URL. Here’s an example of a Standard Ad for our client 49th Shelf for their book giveaway:
Page Posts Ads use the copy and image of a post on your page. You can choose a specific post or set the ad to use the most recent eligible post.
Note: Using the most recent eligible post requires that Facebook approve every new post on your page to use as an ad. Beware of using the most recent eligible post because your ad will be constantly pending approval depending on how frequently you post.
Page Post Ads are a good way to promote popular posts to both fans and non-fans because they highlight the number of likes and comments you’ve received on the post.
Here’s an example of a Page Post ad for 49th Shelf:
What Are Sponsored Stories?
Sponsored Stories are ads that highlight interactions on your Page to friends of your fans.
They can be displayed in the regular ad slot in the right column on Facebook but they can also appear in News Feeds. The benefit of having a Sponsored Story appear in News Feeds (other than the fact that they will be more likely to be seen) is that they can also be seen on mobile. This is currently the only way ads are be displayed on m.facebook.com.
There are 3 types of Sponsored Stories:
Page Like Story: An ad that tells friends when someone has liked a page
Check-in Story: An ad that tells friends when someone has checked-in to a page
Page Post Like Story: An ad that tells friends when someone has liked a post on a page
Here’s an example of a Page Like Story for 49th Shelf:
Both Sponsored Stories and Page Post Ads use Friends of Connections targeting. This means that the ads are automatically set to reach the people who are eligible to see the story in their News Feed.
Note: you need to have a certain number of fans on your Page before you can run Sponsored Stories, or your estimated reach will be too low. In our experience, 1000 fans seemed to be the tipping point for running successful Sponsored Stories.
Why Should I Use Sponsored Stories?
Sponsored Stories can help to boost the distribution of your Page and your Page posts by highlighting the interactions that people have had on your Page. Facebook is showing less and less content in News Feeds (the average Facebook post only reaches 12-16% of your fans) so Sponsored Stories give more exposure to your content. They also rely on social context and the premise that people are more likely to like things that their friends have liked.
Best Practices For Running a Facebook Ad Campaign
1. Segment Your Campaigns
Identify the different audience groups you are targeting and create 3-4 well-targeted ads for each group. You can target by location, age, gender and interests.
Test which audience responds best to each ad. Adjust your budgets to focus on the high-performing ads.
Note: If you have a small budget, it is better to shorten the length of time your ads run rather than spreading out the time and diluting the effectiveness of your ads.
2. Customize the Messaging for Each Audience
Your body copy and imagery should be tailored to each specific audience group.
Body Copy:
Keep body copy short and clear
Give people an incentive to like your ad
Include a clear call to action
Imagery:
Use eye-catching, colourful images
Make the most of the full space available
Choose simple, uncluttered images
3. Track Performance With Reporting
You should login to the ad manager every day to check the performance of your ads. Pause ads that are not doing well and create similar ads based on the ads that are doing well. Facebook shows ads multiple times to the same people so the key is to change around the image and/or body copy every couple of days.
Facebook Insights provides additional reports in the left-hand column of the ads manager. The Responder Demographics report, in particular, is useful. It shows which demographic group is responding best to your ads, and could even influence decisions about your marketing activity beyond Facebook.
Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist
Run Facebook Ads to build up your fan base.
Once you have around 1000 fans, use Sponsored Stories to interact with friends of fans.
Structure your campaign by segment then test 3-4 ads per campaign.
Use compelling copy and images for each ad, tailoring your message to the right audience.
Track ad performance on Ads Manager every couple of days.
Pause low performers and adjust budget; play around with ad text and images. Remember: Only Sponsored Stories that are doing really well appear in news feeds. So, monitor and optimize your Sponsored Stories, in particular.
For more information:
Facebook recently held two livecasts on Facebook ads (Deep Dive: Sponsored Stories and Measure and Improve your Ad Campaigns) as part of their Marketing Talks LIVE series. You can access the videos in the Facebook Marketing Classroom.
The deadline to move your Facebook Page over to the new Facebook Timeline is March 30th. Are you ready?
Despite many organizations’ reluctance to change over to the new Timeline, there are some benefits to the new format. According to a study undertaken by Simply Measured, brands are seeing 46% more engagement per posts with Timeline. While we can’t speak for everyone, we have noticed a boost in engagement on the Facebook Pages we manage.
Overall, Timeline for Brands offers some great opportunities to tell your corporate story. Give some thought to your Timeline before it goes live. Here are 4 things that you need to know to transition your Facebook page to the new Facebook Timeline.
1. Timeline Cover Image Rules and Sizes
The most obvious difference with the new Facebook Timeline is the large Cover Image that runs horizontally at the top. The Cover Image should be visually compelling yet simple and convey the tone of your organization. Beware of cluttered images as this could be perceived as disorganization.
Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”
The Profile Picture and Custom Tab Image sizes have also changed:
Cover Image: 850 x 315 px
Profile Pic: 180 x 180 px
Custom Tab Image: 117 x 74 px
2. Update Your About Page
Is your About Page up to date? With Timeline, your About info appears right under your profile picture.
The About section can be up to 255 characters and should include details about your brand and a link to your website. If your company has a physical location and is a “Place” Page (like Boxcar Marketing), the About shows your contact information. Double-check that this information is correct.
3. Use Milestones To Tell Your Brand Story
Milestones are a great way to explain the history of your business, show your brand’s connections to the community and tell your brand story. Fanta and Ford have done some interesting things with their Timelines and Milestones. Fanta has created a game where fans hunt for characters through the Timeline. Ford has peppered theirs with factoids about the company’s rich history.
Step 1: To add a Milestone, you can can click anywhere on the Timeline or just go to status box and click Milestone.
Step 2: The Milestone window will pop up and you can name the Milestone, give it a date and location, include a story and add a photo (which should be 843 x 403 px).
Step 3 (optional): If you don’t want to clutter your News Feed while you are adding Milestones, choose “Hide from News Feed”.
Note: What appears on the Timeline is specific to each person. Facebook now shows you how your friends have interacted with the Page. This personalization makes it a bit tricky as a page admin because you see different posts depending on whether you are using Facebook as your personal profile or if you are using it as your Page.
4. Add and Edit Timeline Apps
Instead of the old Facebook layout with Page Tabs, Facebook now uses Timeline Apps.
Timeline Apps help brands tell their story and engage with fans through contests as well as through apps for shared interests such as travel, food and photos. Timeline Apps appear right below the main cover image in a horizontal top navigation bar. Only 4 apps can appear at the top, with a maximum of 12 apps listed on your Timeline.
Not only are apps more prominent than page tabs, but there’s more opportunity for customization in how apps appear on your Timeline.
Review the rules and specs for cover images. And remember, calls to action in the cover image.
Proofread your About section and double check spelling, categories, addresses and other key details that will now be more prominently displayed.
Make clever use of Milestones to tell your corporate story.
Choose Timeline Apps that best portray your organization, its culture and promotions. Have a look at the links below for tips on timeline, apps and promotions.
Extra Resources On Using Facebook Timeline for Brands
Have you set up your Google+ business page yet? If you are still wondering why you should spend time on another social network, the answer is clear. Search traffic from Google organic search is likely 60-80% of the traffic to your site. In the age of Panda, personalized search results, rich snippets and monthly changes to the Google search algorithm, social cues like +1s, comments and shares are having a greater and greater impact on SERPs and CTRs (search engine results pages and click through rates).
Many influential marketers (including Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki) agree and are encouraging brands to start taking advantage of Google Plus’ business opportunities. For example, according to this Social Media Examiner interview, Guy Kawasaki spends 99% of his efforts on Google+.
As search evolves, we recommend experimenting with these tools early so that you are prepared for the changes to come. Dedicating 99% of your social media efforts here is likely not right for every business, but the visibility of Google+ interactions in personalized search results are arguably an example of why Google+ is already essential.
Master Google+ with These 5 Tips.
1. Get on Google+
Now is the time to set up your Google+ Business Page. Google’s desire to get into the social space is driving many of its efforts with Google+ and its integration of social aspects into its other services like search, Adwords and YouTube. The SEO experts are in full swing recommending Google+ so it seems prudent to follow this particular trend and jump on the Google+ bandwagon.
If you’re already on Google+ then consider revisiting whatever you put initially into the About section of your Google+ Business Page. (Just like Facebook, Google+ lets you set up personal profiles and business pages. You have a Business Profile and a Personal Profile but to limit confusion we’ll refer to the business profile as your Google+ Business Page and your personal profile as your Google+ Profile.)
Often when people set up new tools, they add a cursory few lines of bio and then forget that they intended to return at a later date to complete the fields. Give careful consideration to the “about” section of your Profile and Business Page and what keyword phrases best describe your business. Also use the employment field in your Profile to list more than just your company name. The employment field is a perfect place for a short tagline that reinforces the value your business provides to its customers. In addition in both the Profile and Business Page focus on the anchor text you select for the first three links in the sidebar. The About section, Employment field and top 3 Sidebar Links are the most visible sections of your profile and demand the most attention.
2. How the Google+ Hovercard Works
The Hovercard is the little pop-up that appears in Google+ when someone hovers over your name or avatar. There are some great tips for controlling what text appears in that hovercard in order to provide Google+ members with information that reflects who you are and why they might be interested in circling you (or your business). Instead of thinking about the hovercard as a Name Tag, think about it as a mini CV or elevator pitch. (Thanks to +Thomas Morffew and +Bob Dunmyer for their experiments to test out how the hovercard works.)
Here’s how the Google+ Hovercard works for Personal Profiles:
1) Tagline trumps all unless it is more than 25 characters
2) Assuming tagline greater than 25 characters, your hover will display in the following order:
a - Current Employment - If “current” box isn’t checked then…
b Education
c - Current Location - If “current” place isn’t identified then…
d - Occupation - If occupation is blank then…
3) A tagline of any length shows up if the above 3 are not included
3. Sharing Web Links with an Image in Google+
Make the most of the +1 button by sharing links and including an image. In many cases, when you share a link in Google+, an image is pulled from the referenced webpage. But sometimes it’s not the image associated with the article but rather an image from the sidebar or other areas of the page. In the top left corner of the image that is automatically pulled in, there are normally back-forward arrows that will let you scroll through the available options. To have greater control over what image is associated with articles on your own blog, consider adding the rich snippet information noted in the link above.
4. Migrating Contacts from Facebook to Google+
Are all your friends on Facebook and you’re not sure who is on Google Plus? Well, you can import your Facebook friends into Google+ using Yahoo. Yes, Yahoo. The video below explains step by step how to do that. Please note that the assumption in this scenario is that your Facebook friends’ have used the same email on Facebook as they are using on Google Plus. Even if some of your contacts are not synch’d up, this is still a clever way to get a head start.
5. Collecting Content to Share on Google+
Guy Kawasaki offers great tips on managing Google+. In particular, he shares articles with a Google+ circle that includes only himself. As he browses the web using Opera, he shares stories of interest with that circle of 1. No one sees the content but Guy. Then sporadically throughout the day, he shares those stories in posts on Google+. Alternatively, you could use StumbleUpon, Delicious or any other bookmarking tool to collect stories for sharing on Google Plus. At Boxcar Marketing, we are looking forward to the day when you can save and schedule content so there’s not a flurry of activity in small pockets during the day but rather a more steady stream. Until then, here’s Guy’s tip.
Changing your Twitter name without losing followers is actually a fairly easy process, thanks to Alicia’s post on how to change your Twitter handle. If you’ve changed your business name or your Twitter handle is different than your other social media profiles now’s the time to change your name. It’s important to use the same name throughout your company’s online profiles so that your business is easy to find. Before you start, you should check to see if your username is available. This video has some tips on how to check domain name and username availability.
We recently had to change our client’s Twitter name when they rebranded from Canadian Bookshelf to The 49th Shelf and these are the steps we took:
1. Hold Your Desired Name
Because we had a set date when we were switching over to the new name, we wanted to hold our desired name so that it would still be available when we switched over.
To do this, create a new Twitter account with the new username.
Note: Anytime you create a Twitter account, you need to use an email address that isn’t associated with any other Twitter accounts, so you’ll need to have a different email address that you can use.
2. Change Your Twitter Name
When you’re ready to change your Twitter name, go into the “fake” account that is holding the new name and under Settings (in the drop down under the person icon) > Account, change the username to one of the default names Twitter suggests.
Note: Change the username in your fake account, rather than deleting the account. This is because Twitter holds the information of deleted accounts (including the username) for 30 days.
Now log in to your active Twitter account and, just like you did in the fake account, change your username to your new name under Settings > Account. You’ll also want to go into Settings > Profile and change your name, website URL and bio to reflect the new name.
3. Claim Your Old Name
Next, create a Twitter account with your old name. This is so you can monitor any mentions or messages that people send using your old name.
Create a Twitter account using the exact same name and handle as your old account. In the bio, mention the name change and link to your new Twitter profile. Also post a tweet saying that you’ve moved with a link to the new profile. If you don’t tweet anything else, this message will stay at the top of the profile and direct people who are looking for you to your new name.
For more help on changing your Twitter username, watch this related video:
Need To Change Your Facebook Page Name Or Gmail Username?
Timeline Apps help brands tell their story and engage with fans through contests (like the Antavo and Strutta) as well as through apps for shared interests such as travel, food and photos. Some of the most popular apps are TripAdvisor, Goodreads, Pinterest and Causes. (Add apps to your timeline.)
So far, we like the new Facebook Timeline because instead of having apps hidden in a left-hand sidebar, Timeline Apps are now right below the main cover image in a horizontal top navigation bar. Only 4 apps can appear at the top, with a maximum of 12 apps listed on your Timeline.
The other nice thing about the new Timeline for Business Pages is that not only are apps more prominent than page tabs, but there’s more opportunity for customization in how apps appear on your Timeline.
Here’s are 3 easy ways to use, edit and promote apps on your Facebook Timeline.
1. Rearranging The Apps On Your Timeline
You can list a maximum of 12 apps on your Timeline and, other than Photos which can’t be moved from the first position, you can rearrange these in any order you wish.
To rearrange apps:
Hover over the app and click on the pencil icon
Choose the app you want to swap it with
Remember that most visitors to your Timeline will only see the top row, so make sure that the 3 apps you choose to list at the top are the most exciting or interesting apps for visitors. Depending on your apps, this could be giveaways, videos or blog content.
2. Changing Your App’s Name and Thumbnail Image
Changing the name of your Page Tabs was possible before, but now you can also change the image associated with your app.
To change an app’s name and thumbnail image:
Under the pencil icon, choose Edit Settings.
Here, you can change your Custom Tab Name (make sure to click Save before you click Okay) or you can change your Custom Tab Image.
When changing your app’s thumbnail image, the image you upload can be a maximum of 111 pixels x 74 pixels. We suggest using an image close to the maximum size in order to take advantage of the space.
Experiment with different photos, text, and calls to action for your thumbnail images to test out what works with your Facebook fans.
3. Promoting Your Apps Using Facebook Timeline
Because there’s no default landing tab anymore, promoting apps is a bit trickier. For example, you can still use fan gates (or like gates) on a contest app so that only those who have liked your page can see the contest details. But driving traffic to that contest is all the more difficult. This is true for all Timeline Apps.
Here are 3 ways to drive fans to your Facebook Timeline apps:
You can post a status update about your app and link to it. Get the link for your app under the pencil icon by choosing “Link to this Tab.”
If you want to promote the app for 7 days, you can post a status update as mentioned above but then pin your post to the top of your Facebook Page. A pinned post has a orange flag in the top right corner and remains at the top of the page for 7 days. After 7 days, the post will return to the timeline under its original post date.
You can also run a Facebook ad and link to your app. Follow the same instructions as above to find the link for your app.
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