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Posts Tagged ‘social media marketing’

10 Social Media Tips for Effective Book Marketing

August 31st, 2014

Hi All!

With the boom of self-publishing, most authors don’t have the backing of a traditional Publishing House to handle the marketing of their books. And, nowadays, even if you do land a book publishing contract, many Publishers don’t provide the marketing support they used to.Social media concept

So, regardless of whether you self-publish your book OR sign a book deal, you’ll find yourself having to be your own Publicist and Marketing Expert. Unless, of course, you can hire someone to do it for you. However most authors who contact me are on a tight budget and can’t afford a costly Publicist. That’s why authors hire me to provide them with customized strategies and plans that they can execute themselves and/or with the help of a cost-effective Virtual Assistant.

Please keep in mind that Social Media is just ONE strategy in your overall book marketing mix. You need to also include PR, media outreach, and other marketing strategies for effective book marketing. And I’ve written plenty of blogs and articles on those, too.

But in this article, I’d like to focus on 10 tips that you can use to promote your book, increase your book sales, and build your brand, using Social Media:

1. Embed a Retweet Button

Who doesn’t love a free sample? Give one chapter away for free to your audience and embed a retweet button in strategic locations, motivating readers to easily share it with their followers on Twitter. Side Note: Avoid just sending tweets that are all about “Buy my book!” with a link to it on Amazon.

2. Promote Your Personal Brand

Promoting your Personal Brand as the author is as important as promoting your book! So in your Social Media posts, make your prospects want to connect with you. Share stuff about your hobbies, interests, your writing process, and expertise. Let the audience (who could be prospective buyers of your book) get to know you as a person by not JUST focusing your content all about your book.

3. Ask Readers to Spread the Word

Ask readers of your book to tell their networks about it. This is something MANY authors don’t think of doing. Don’t think that just because someone loved your book they’re going to remember to share the news with others. People get busy and forget! Remind them about your book and give them a little nudge to tell their networks about it.

4. Network with Other Writers in Your Genre

Find authors who target the same audience that you do for your book. Don’t look at them as competitors even if those authors have written books on the same topic as yours. Promoting other writers can help attract readers to your book, and those authors may reciprocate. Get involved in their social networks: “Like” their Facebook Pages, follow them on Twitter and retweet their posts, and ask them to write a Guest Blog for your blog, and ask if they would accept a blog post from you for theirs. Building relationships with other authors in your genre is a great strategy for cross-promotion that benefits you both!

5. Create a Video Contest

Run a contest asking readers of your book to share a video about why they liked your book so much, and award the person who provides the best one with a $25 or $50 Gift Card (i.e. for Starbucks or a VISA gift card). You can then post the Top 10 videos (or all of them) on your YouTube Channel, your Facebook Page, on your website, tweet the links to the vids, share them in your e-newsletter, etc. Those videos all become marketing tools to promote your book in a wide variety of ways.

6. Use Hashtags

Use hashtags of your industry to promote your book on Twitter (and elsewhere) to reach a larger audience who are interested in your topic. Confused by hashtags? Read this great article for an overview and tips!

7. Participate in the Conversation

Monitor the conversation about your book online, and post responses to comments. Engaging with your audience will grow your audience base and encourage others to join the conversation. Again, it’s another strategy for people to get to know you as a person, and that can forge bonds with them.

8. Go Niche

Search Google to find social networks in the same niche as your book. Become a fan of these networks or pages. Participate in the conversations and when appropriate, mention your book. But be sure to avoid only posting comments promoting your book because that will annoy people.

9. Mention Your Book in Your Social Network Bios

I’m always shocked by how many authors who contact me DON’T have their books mentioned in their bios on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. Your book, and a link to it, should be added to every online bio you have.

10. Add the Book Title to Your Email Signature

Again, this is another very simple thing to do that many authors don’t think of. Add your book title and a link to it in your email signature block so that EVERY person who receives an email from you sees it.

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Three Ways to Engage and Attract Millennial Customers

August 05th, 2014

Hi All!

For Sellers to more successfully engage, attract, and develop new customer relationships, it’s important to be aware of this interesting fact shared by J. Walker Smith, Ph.D. and Ann Clurman, Co-Authors of the book, Rocking the Ages: “Generationally determined lifestyles & social values exercise as much influence on buying and purchasing as more commonly understood demographic factors like income, education, and gender do – maybe even more.”

How Millennials (aka: Gen Y), Generation X, and Baby Boomers each prefer to be engaged with is different. And it’s critical that Sellers educate themselves on these preferences as it can greatly improve the results of their sales and marketing efforts.

However, for this article, the focus is on Millennials. Not only are they the newest generation of young, adult consumers, they are the most unique. Thus, they’re worth learning about. Why? For starters, they are the largest generation the U.S. history. Plus, by 2025, 75% of the U.S. workforce is going to be comprised of Millennials.

As a result, not only will Sellers and Employers be working with them more as colleagues, but they’re going to be heavily competing for them as customers.

There are many ways to attract, engage and build brand-loyalty with this unique generation. Here’s an example of three to be aware of:

  1. They Respect Giving Back: The Millennials are the first generation required to volunteer in their communities as a High School graduation requirement. Therefore, they are wired to “support causes”, and countless studies show they are attracted and loyal to brands who share that same philosophy.
  2. Peer Recommendations Mean Everything: They are an extremely close-knit generation and value peer recommendations more than flashy marketing campaigns. As a matter of fact, research reveals they rank “peers” as their most valued source of information. The key take away? Make sure to have Millennial testimonials and imagery in marketing materials, as well as include Millennial-created content in social media efforts, to attract them.
  3. They Require (and Demand) Guidance: Although they are confident and perceive themselves as “individuals”, Millennials tend to struggle with decision-making. Remember, this is the generation raised by Helicopter Parents, and those parents tend to continue “hovering” over their Millennial kids well into adulthood. So if Sellers focus on being “Trusted Advisors” versus “salespeople” (solely focused on closing the deal), they will fare much better with Millennial customers.

Smart companies are investing a lot of time, effort, and money into learning everything they can about the Millennial mindset; both as employees AND consumers. Furthermore, Sales Teams all over the globe are learning how to better engage with them as our next generation of key decision-makers in the workforce.

With $1.5 billion in annual spending power, and being a generation 85 million strong, it’s easy to see why companies ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 corporations care about them. The eldest Millennials are now around 30 years-old…so they’re not just “clueless kids” anymore.

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

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Four Ways to Market Your Content (that Most People Don’t Do)

July 14th, 2014

Hi All!

You feel you have created a masterpiece in the form of your long-form content, such as an article or blog post. But it is of no value to you until others read it. You need to spread the word to attract traffic. So your content needs publicity; just like big brands that advertises products regularly to stay fresh in the minds of their target audience.

Here’s a phrase I use a lot because it’s true: This may all seem like common sense BUT it’s not common practice.

Everyday I’m contacted by small business owners, speakers, other types of self-employed people, and authors wanting to increase book sales, who want my help with their company or personal branding, PR, publicity, and

Do YOU Market Your Content Effectively? Most people don't!

Do YOU Market Your Content Effectively? Most people don’t!

marketing. So I can honestly say that the following tips are NOT regularly used because the people who initially contact me aren’t doing them!

How can you market your content? Keep reading:

Smart Use of Keywords

SEO is more about smart placement of keywords. There is no place for keyword stuffing in Google. Any articles that are flooded with keywords won’t rank well in the search engines. Therefore, proper keyword placement is important.

Let’s say you HAVE done your homework of accurately placing keywords at the right places in the content. But it won’t help much if you do not include keywords as #hashtags in your text. Remember to use your brand name, main topic, and subtopics as hashtags. However, avoid crowding your posts with hashtags.

Use Interesting Images

Your headline won’t always attract readers. With so many status updates and posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook from friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. flooding their profiles, most social media users simply move on unless you grab them. And oftentimes it’s an interesting pic that will get their attention first and cause them to pause to look at your topic headline.

Expert Advice

When sharing your content on social media sites, do not forget to make smart use of expert advice in your posts. Consumers today look for advice from experts in the industry, and if you can prove yourself as an expert, you will likely attract more readers of your content. You can also include the insights, quotes, and tips from other experts in your industry in your content to “enhance” your position as an expert, too. You’ll be “guilty by association” and that’s a good thing!

Share to Get Shared

Again, this may sound like common sense BUT it’s not common practice by most of the new clients who come to me. They spend all their time focusing on “them” versus sharing other people’s content. Bad move! How can you expect people to retweet your tweets, share your posts and spread the word to THEIR followers if you NEVER do that for them?

Several years ago I wrote a very popular article about how people suffer from Social “ME”dia Syndrome, and the concept is STILL relevant TODAY…if you’re suffering from that get help quickly and start supporting others in your social networks. Ya gotta GIVE to GET!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

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Tips for Using Instragram to Grow Your Small Business

March 04th, 2014

Hi All!

With social media ruling the roost in business promotion, it’s hard to ignore any social networking platform these days, and Instagram is no exception. What started as an iPhone only app has expanded into one of the fastest growing and most vibrant social media networks; Instagram for business is a great marketing tool, especially those targeting younger audiences.

With over 150 million users already, Instagram is the ultimate visual marketing tool to showcase to your prospective customers your social and human side. Instagram is all about pictures and videos, and thus is a great marketing tool for your business. After all, pictures directly appeal to emotions, increase interaction rate, and strike a chord with prospects, thus making your brand visible to a larger audience.

Here are a few tips for using Instagram for building your brand, increasing sales, and growing your small business:

Introduce your employees

You may not know but most of your followers are keen on knowing the people associated with your brand, especially those who keep your company going. By introducing your team through Instagram photos, you humanize your brand, thus building a connection with prospects and customers while enhancing their experience.

Cultivate a following

It’s easier than ever to increase your following on Instagram for business by linking it with your Facebook account. Connect specific brand images to your Facebook business page with a relevant, popular hashtag that aligns with your brand image or marketing campaign. This is a necessary step to show to your Facebook fans that you’re on Instagram.  Use relevant hashtags (#yourbrandhere) to increase your brand exposure and reach out to a wider audience for leads while helping people find your account.

Be polite to follow

Do not forget to follow your followers on Instagram. It’s a good idea to follow other brands that relate to your specific brand so as to create strategic relationships on the platform. Give your followers a sneak peek into an upcoming event or a news feature often can help keep them hooked to your page. Not only this, make your loyal followers feel special by sending them updates about an upcoming product, the latest launch, or new releases. This is one of the easiest tips for using Instagram for business – helping build anticipation in prospects and keeping them coming back for more.

Don’t be content with static

As a multimedia platform, Instagram now allows you to upload 15 second video clips. So why remain static when you can use the visual feature to upload behind-the-scenes peeks at different business activities. A few businesses even use this video feature for customer testimonials and product demos, helping prospects see your human side. Further, you may wish to embed Instagram video in your website or blog to reach a larger community and boost your business exposure.

Share positive emotion more often

When using Instagram for business, carefully curate your photos considering the likes and dislikes of your target audience. Figure out what kind of photos they would be more interested in. It is human nature to like smiling faces more than sad ones. You may use a serious post occasionally to make an impact, but prefer to share positive emotion more often. Let the powerful imagery in the images evoke emotions that words often fail to express. Encourage followers to share their story with you to build a relationship and show them that you care, unlike most other businesses that merely focus on self promotion.

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Powerful Pinterest Tips to Help Grow Your Small Business

December 11th, 2013

Hi All!

As the third most popular social media network after Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has over 48.7 million users, recording more than 25 million monthly visitors. And it has become a powerful social media platform for product-based businesses, bringing in more traffic than Yahoo and Bing.

Plus, statistics show that prospects are likely to spend 70% more money with you when they are driven to your website from Pinterest. That alone makes it all the more important to take this newer social media platform seriously!

That said, here are a few tips for using Pinterest effectively to grow your small business and increase your sales:

1. Increase Your Brand Awareness

Provide useful, educational information to your followers. Your purpose is to become a reliable source of the most accurate, valuable information; not just to promote your products and business. This will ensure that your followers see you as an authority in your industry and look to you as the go-to place for all relevant information about your niche. Done right, you’ll inspire interest and build trust online, and that can lead to increased customer loyalty, greater audience reach, and referrals from others.

2. Expand Your Reach

Other social media networks have given small businesses amazing tools to expand reach and grow business, and Pinterest does, too. Using the group board feature on Pinterest and collaborating with popular pinners, you can easily expose your brand to a greater audience and expand your reach. Make each board theme specific, with a catchy title and keyword-focused relevant content. As the audience follows the focused boards, your follower numbers will tend to spike.

3. Make Your Business Site Pinnable

The best way to spread the word about your business is to make your Pinterest site visual.  You may use Flickr, Shutterstock, Photo Pin, iStockPhoto, or Fotolia to find unique, interesting, exciting, and pinnable photos on a regular basis. However, don’t forget to check the copyright of images. Be sure to give credit where it’s due. The most successful pins are a combination of valuable content and great images.

4. Add Pinterest Logo to Your Website

Adding a Pinterest logo to your business website will help increase your fan following and remind site visitors to pin your content. Also, to ensure a positive brand image, send messages that express the real identity (the voice) of your business. So plan out your boards accordingly, keep your content organized across different boards, and clearly outline the information you want to share with your fans.

5. Engage with People

Engage with your audience to better understand what they want to generate better boards that they’ll like. Use the Repin option to stay current with what is trending on Pinterest by examining the pins of the most popular Pinterest users and keep your pins sharp, current, and targeted. Also, be sure to keep an eye on your competition to see what they are doing to attract traffic and create engagement.

These tips may seem like common sense to some of you, but they’re NOT common practice with many pinners! I constantly hear from people who ask me, “I’m on Pinterest (or Facebook, or YouTube, or LinkedIn, or Twitter)…but what should I be doing there?”

That’s more proof that opening an account on a social media platform doesn’t immediately make you a marketing expert. Learn the basics of Pinterest, get comfortable with using it, and then start experimenting with more tools and features they offer. It can work for you as long as you’re persistent and consistent!

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7 Tips to Create More Effective Tweets

September 16th, 2013

Hi All!

According to Brafton, a Content Marketing Agency, almost 80% of the B2B companies using Twitter are not driving business from it…but WHY? Many of them are not paying attention to the following tweet tips. Are you?

Whether you own a small business or oversee the Marketing and Social Media department at a large company, and regardless of whether your business is B2B or B2C, these tips can help!

Here are seven, basic yet effective, ways to compose tweets in order to build website traffic, business, and your brand:

  1. Use Proper English & Grammar: By using proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, your tweet will be easy to read and comprehend. And it will create a positive impression for your brand. Basically, make your tweets clear versus clever!
  2. Create Appealing Content: Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think like them to accurately craft a tweet that will connect, communicate, and appeal to them.
  3. Use a Call-to-Action: Tell your audience what you want them to do. The focus of many of your tweets should include a call-to-action for your audience. This gets them to “engage” with you versus keeping it a one-way communication process.
  4. Link to Something: You can link your tweet to your blog, website, an online article, or social media page. Using link shortening services, such as bit.ly, will not only save space, but also create better looking tweets. And research reveals bit.ly links generate maximum retweets.
  5. Include #Hashtags: Including 1-2 hashtags relevant to the message is a good way to improve tweets and increase reach among prospects (who are not yet followers of you). Those hashtagged words that become popular are trending topics and you can use them to piggy back for views. Warning: Using hashtags too often is a bad twitequette and will not serve you well. The search engines will see you as a spammer and the whole process will become counterproductive, thus potentially harming your social media marketing efforts.
  6. Avoid Abbreviations or Slang: Avoid using text-speak and slang in your tweets. You’re not sending a private message or text to a friend; you’re primarily creating professional messages for an audience that can impact your business.
  7. Focus on Size: An ideal tweet should include (approximately): 100 characters for the message, 20 characters for the link, and 20 characters for retweets or the info source.

Take the time to focus on these tweet tips, as well as be consistent & persistent in your Twitter efforts, and you’ll be one of the business’s that DOES benefit from Twitter by increasing your sales and leads!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

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Simple Strategies to Get More Business on Facebook

January 13th, 2013

Hi All!

Social Media is an area that I not only conduct workshops and seminars on for small business owners, speakers and authors, but one that I provide private consultation on with every single client who hires me.

Now, I realize that to some of you Social Media may not be a mystery for building your brand, lead generation  and increased sales, however I will tell you it IS a huge mystery to most anyone who contacts me.

The common questions I hear are: How can I get more followers on Twitter and attract customers? I have a Facebook Business (Fan) Page but how do I use for marketing to get more clients? I have no idea how to use LinkedIn, Pinterest or YouTube for business, so what should I be doing? How can I use social media for book or product marketing?

And on and on and on…I’m not exaggerating when I say those types of questions are posed to me several times a week.

Obviously each one of those inquiries could each be the topic of its own book (and many have been!), so I’ll narrow this down to ONE of those topics and tackle the others in future posts I write.

Today I’d like to share an excerpt from an informative article written by Angela Stringfellow, a Business Writer who just had this article published on American Express’s awesome website for Small Business Owners and entrepreneurs, OpenForum.com. Her article is entitled: “10 Tips for Using Facebook to Boost Business”.

To avoid copyright issues, here are just the first three tips she shares and then you can click on the link to read the final seven:

Here are some innovative ways small businesses can use Facebook and capitalize on the power of this social giant.

1. Integrate Facebook connect buttons into your company website. Website visitors can easily connect to Facebook with the click of a button, enabling small business owners to maintain contact with potential customers even if they never return to the website.

2. Be responsive. Josh Grossman of e-Coupon service SavingStar says his company uses Facebook to communicate with customers and makes a point to respond to every question and comment promptly. Small businesses often thrive on personal interaction, and Facebook is a useful tool.

3. Make it easy to share content. Grossman explains, “Every coupon we post on SavingStar has a Facebook like button. Each coupon gets dozens or even hundreds of likes, helping to spread the word with users’ Facebook friends. All of our blog posts also have Facebook like and send buttons, and we use the Facebook comments plugin to make it easy for users to comment and share those comments with their Facebook friends.”

The tips that Angela shares in her article are dead on, so I highly recommend CLICKING HERE to read the other seven!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

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Valuable Lessons for How (Not) to Market on Facebook

October 05th, 2012

Ever since its initial public offering in May, Facebook’s life as a public company has been scrutinized, analyzed and commented on by the hour. During the lead up to their public debut, everything seemed rosy for the social media bandleader.

Even General Motors pulling out of their $10 million ad campaign the week before the campaign didn’t do much to slow the company’s initial roll up to $38 a share. Unfortunately, the gaping problem that GM pointed out hasn’t gone away. Facebook’s sidebar ads suffer from a dismal click-through rate. Although the internet average is just .1 percent, Facebook’s click rate settles around a pathetic 0.051 percent.

So is marketing on Facebook worth it? Of course! But not in the manner you might have previously thought.

Social media is all about engaging. The point is to start a dialogue with customers. Just like your blog, the posts on your Facebook wall, Twitter feed, or Google+ page should be insightful, thought-provoking, and most of all, useful.

Whether you’ve had success or failure in the past with social media (or you’re just getting started), remember these integral lessons whenever you’re launching or updating your campaign:

Don’t Be a Broken Record Player

Although tools that allow businesses to aggregate all their social media accounts in one place are useful, recycling a post across different platforms, this isn’t always the wisest approach. If a consumer likes your post on Facebook enough to follow your Twitter account as well, they might soon unfollow you if they’re bombarded with the same messages from multiple outlets.

Of course, some outreach is best shouted from the rooftops. In general, however, treat each platform as its own.

Make Each Post Unique

The broken record player analogy works individually within an individual outlet like Facebook, as well. A week-long sale shouldn’t be touted in the same way each day (3 more days! 2 more days!). Try to think of a witty or relevant post to highlight the sale each day. If you’re a shoe store, post a photograph of yourself in a favorite pair and solicit follower feedback. Or, if you own a spa, reward followers with a Facebook-only giveaway for users that ‘Like’ your post that day.

Don’t Over-Market

Facebook recently launched ‘promoted posts,’ allowing business pages to pay a small fee in order to maximize the number of their existing followers they reach with a status update. Although this tweak can be highly useful when you’re hosting an event or a major sale, it doesn’t change the rules about what you post. If your update is a blatant and boring marketing pitch, it won’t convert the extra views into further sales. Use your website to promote your products directly, and use Facebook to talk about them.

This spring, Facebook even launched a paid post beta program for regular users in New Zealand, allowing posters to make their updates ‘stickier’ on their friends’ news feeds for an extra dollar or two. If these become a regular option around the world, it could change the way our news feeds work, increasing the pressure even more for marketing content to be of a high quality that stands on its own, sales pitch aside.

Stay Engaged

Many businesses make the mistake of devoting themselves to a social media marketing plan and committing to a certain number of posts each day or week. But is it better to post three posts each day that get zero comments, or one post that results in a long stream of back-and-forth between followers?

Ask questions in your posts and invite followers to ask questions in return. Be quick to reply when they post, helping to foster a conversation that will promote you as an expert in your field, building trust that translates into sales. Not to mention, the more comments and ‘Likes’ a post receives, the higher it ranks within Facebook’s news feed algorithm.

Sometimes You Say it Best When You Say Nothing At All

Are you totally unmotivated to post to your Facebook account today? If you simply can’t think of anything good to say, keep your mouth shut. The last thing you want is to lose followers due to boring posts or updates that shamelessly try to sell product. If you’ve got a case of ‘poster’s block,’ just log out and don’t post anything. Something good will come to you later.

With Facebok struggling to further monetize and convince investors that it’s worth more than $20 a share (where it’s been hovering for most of August), there’s no telling what changes may be in store. Whatever alterations Facebook does make to its marketing options for businesses, the rules offered here are universal — with social media, start a conversation, establish yourself as an expert, and trust that the sales will follow.

Blog Post Courtesy of: Senior executive Anita Brady is the President of 123Print.com.   They are a leading resource for high quality customizable items like business cards, letterhead and other materials for small businesses and solo practitioners.

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How to Create Unique and Encouraging Facebook Ads

June 02nd, 2012

Hi All!

The following Guest Blog post is courtesy of Craig Robinson, Editor for Qwaya, a Facebook campaign tool that’s run through a web interface. If you’re a small business owner who currently runs ads on Facebook, or plan to, you do NOT want to miss the incredibly useful tips and strategies he, as a Facebook Advertising Expert, outlines to make your online ads much more effective!

So…let’s jump in to Craig’s article!

With so many different software options out there for you to choose from, you can realistically churn out ads by the hundreds every single day if you wanted to. You’re only limited by your imagination and the speed of your software. However, as most advertisers ultimately learn when dealing with Facebook, quantity never bests quality. One original, inspiring ad from one source can get 10 times the conversions of an entire army of shoddy ads.

People left places like MySpace for Facebook because Facebook was of superior quality. No jumbled mess of advertising for porn and dating sites and other garbage. So, to make the most out of this social media giant, you need to post high-quality ads. Below, we will go over a few great ways in which you can hone your ad-making skills.

A Five-Step Guide for Creative Ad-Making:

1: Emulation is Not Theft

You can think of emulation like trend-watching in this context. The idea isn’t to steal ideas from anyone; and it’s definitely not to outright steal ads. But you need to keep up with trends. As you’re operating a business, it’s difficult to know what groups of people are liking on Facebook these days. You might decide a humorous Rage Comic ad would create a social context buzz, but you may be two years late for that if you’re not keeping up with the trends. So when we speak of emulation here, what we’re really speaking of is keeping an eye on the competition to make sure that you’re not missing the ball.

2: Text and Context are Different Things

You can’t always type your way to social context and high conversions, so remember that leaning on text too heavily isn’t how you create an original ad. You want your text to be very specific to the purpose and to provide a call of action without making bold promises and guarantees that cannot be matched. But you don’t want to only rely on the text for a creative ad. For example, a press release style of ad is good, but it’s even better with an image(s). Trying to type your way to popularity isn’t nearly as efficient as going with a blended approach.

3: Target a Complete Niche

A lot of advertisers make the mistake of not targeting a large enough niche. Did you know that women over 50 years of age click at higher rates than anyone? Yeah; it’s true. You don’t want to only cater to 18-35 or whatever popular demographic you read about. You want to cater to all inside of the niche. Expand on your main keyword (for instance: stereo equipment) and think of every instance in which it can be used, regardless of age and even of location. Expand, expand, expand!

4: Visualizing the Goal

Optical illusions and humorous images and the like are all big draws for people. Remember, the Facebook expert advertises in the realm of social context. The amateur advertises dry business slogans to a narrow niche. Be very visual with your ads and entice attention by causing people to actually focus on what they’re looking at. Your main goal is conversion, but that’s not your only goal. Popular, enticing ads will catch on.

5: Always Test Your Ads

The best part about advertising is that you’re never going to rely on one ad and you’re never going to leave an ad out there that doesn’t perform well. As long as you’re testing, you will know which areas of the ad to tweak and how to proceed with a successful campaign. You always need to test what you’re doing.

It’s not a complicated thing to advertise with Facebook. Just make sure that you’re always adapting and are always looking to be creative.

Thanks, Craig, for those helpful, quick-hit tips for improving your branding and sales using Facebook advertising!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

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5 Key Strategies for Effective Facebook Advertising Campaigns

April 24th, 2012

Hi All!

I came across this extremely helpful article written by Melinda Emerson, The Small Biz Lady. Melinda always provides great content and info so you should follower her on Twitter @SmallBizLady and read her blog posts.

Many clients come to me either confused about Facebook Advertising, or have never even considered running Facebook Ads. And I typically find most of them think Facebook Ads are probably really expensive. But, that’s NOT true!

Not only can you choose the exact audience you want your ad to appear on the pages of, BUT you can also control how long it runs and how much you spend. Also, ads are great for promoting your events! You can run a Facebook Ad campaign leading up to your event and then stop the campaign once it’s over. Cool stuff! Again, you’re in total control of your campaigns and budget.

For more info on all the general stuff about “how” to run ads, visit the Facebook Ads page.

Okay…back to the purpose of this article! I’d like to share 5 tips Melinda offers once you’ve decided to run ads.

“5 Areas to Focus on When Setting Up Facebook Ads” by Melinda Emerson. Please note this is just an excerpt from the entire article she wrote, so click here to read the whole thing!

User Destination: Figure out where you want to send the users that click on your ad. There is a strong benefit to sending people to a Facebook Business Page, as well as sending them to a company website. It all depends on the marketing goal you are hoping to achieve. Costs per click will also vary based on where you direct people to go. A CPC landing page can make or break an ad campaign, but the landing page doesn’t necessarily need to be offsite. Facebook Business Pages allow for creative opportunities for landing pages including a contact form or a Facebook store among other options.

Ad Type: Determining which ad type to choose can directly impact the success of a campaign. Facebook Ads are a common ad type that is structured most similarly to traditional CPC ads. Sponsored stories, event, post, and application ads can also be successful for brands but focus on more specific content. There is a strong social advantage for running ads that highlight a brand’s status update or event because they show “likes” and shares associated with that post. These ad types often see increased click through rates because of the social association.

Targeting: You not only have the opportunity to target your current demographic, but can also connect with an audience that you would like to target as customers. Facebook allows you to target users based on every profile feature that they enter. Likes and interests are a feature that businesses need to take advantage of. If a business sells fitness products they have the opportunity to show their ads to anyone that “likes” fitness, health, working out, yoga, etc. The specific targeting allows for leads from a very qualified user group, which makes the Facebook Ad conversion rates much higher than traditional CPC campaigns.

Reporting: In addition to the basic reporting that Facebook offers, there are other ways to track your user’s activity after they click on your ad. You can setup goals and conversion tracking in Google Analytics that can assist in determining the success of the ad campaign.

Optimization: Continuously managing your ad campaign is vital to its success but knowing how to optimize it is what can really drive results. Knowing which ads are performing and why is what you’ll need to know to carry that success to the other ad campaigns.

I hope her tips take some of the mystery out of Facebook Ad campaigns for you! Regardless of whether you’re a small business owner, coach, consultant, entertainer, book author or speaker, Facebook Ads are a great way to generate traffic to your Fan Page (Business Page), website, events, products and BRAND…and it’s highly targeted and cost-effective for lead generation!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

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