Depending on your goal(s) for your Facebook ad, here are 3 ad layouts that can help you gain prospects or sales. It’s important to try new things on Facebook and to do some original ideas to grab readers’ attention.
Click here to read the article.
Is Facebook Organic Marketing Dead?
Here is my synopsis of Michael Stelzner’s interview with Mari Smith.
Michael is owner/editor of Social Media Examiner, my favorite social media newsletter.
Mari is a long-time expert on Facebook marketing. She does great training sessions and provides excellent content on her Facebook page.
- Intriguing change to Facebook’s mission: Used to be “to connect the world.” Now it is “giving people the power to build community and bringing the world closer together.”
- Facebook is putting more emphasis on groups including making them more business-friendly and allowing ways to monetize the groups.
- The ability to boost a group post and other features for groups are in the pipeline.
- Facebook is working on end-to-end encryption and short-life content.
- Don’t link to your YouTube videos from Facebook. Since YouTube is a major competitor, Facebook isn’t giving the videos reach.
- Instead upload your videos directly to Facebook.
- Link posts which link to outside content get the lowest reach and lowest engagement per BuzzSumo’s analysis of 777 million posts.
- Average reach of a post is now 1 – 6%. It used to be 5-10%.
- Video posts outperform photo and still image posts by 73%.
- Question posts are popular with Facebook. They take up less space in the newsfeed and generate “community” conversation.
- Video is extremely popular with Facebook because they are trying to become a major player in the digital streaming arena.
- Advertising in video is growing and will be economically feasible for small businesses in a short time.
- BuzzSumo’s study revealed that the optimal length for a Facebook Live video is 3-4 minutes. Facebook will let you go longer if you have engagement from the audience.
My Conclusions:
- Successful organic marketing on Facebook is much harder, more expensive and more risky than previously.
- Paid advertising is required in combination with organic.
- You can’t ignore Facebook but you can limit the effort.
- Be clear about your goals for Facebook marketing.
- Increase your Facebook budget if you want Facebook results. This means more dollars for organic posts and more dollars for paid advertising.
- Consider other social media platforms that are used by your audience and expand those efforts.
Anyone Can Post on Facebook Business Pages
Yesterday at my Womens Success Referral Group, the question came up of why you can’t always post on someone’s business page. The most likely answer is that they have their post set to only allow their posts.
Go to your Business Page
Go to Settings
Click on the General tab
The third option is Visitor Posts. Make sure it says Anyone can publish to the Page. If necessary, click the Edit link on the right and change the setting. Be sure to Save your change.
Then make sure your Notifications are set to let you know when activity happens on your Page.
Should someone make a negative post, you can delete it and block them from your Page.
Facebook Groups
The Impact of Facebook’s Changes from Social Media Examiner
I just received this email from Social Media Examiner. They are one of the experts I follow regularly to stay informed on all things social media. Michael’s article is quite serious and is a wake up call. Yes, it is also a sales opportunity. However, Social Media Examiner has always educated first then made sales so I trust his opinions. Read on… And get prepared to change your game.
Why Facebook’s future should concern all marketers
Pamela, you might be wondering what the impact of Facebook’s new mission will have on you.
It’s Mike Stelzner (founder of Social Media Examiner) coming to you with some commentary and direction.
I took detailed notes of Mark Zuckerberg’s opening keynote at the F8 conference. It’s what he DIDN’T say that’s troubling.
Mark didn’t say a thing about Pages. There was no mention of live video, and no mention of the Watch platform.
But there was a lot of talk about private messages, participation in small groups, and creating Stories as the fastest growing opportunities.
Facebook also profiled a new look, it’s biggest change in five years.
“Reduced permanence,” is also a phrase Mark used over the last few weeks. It means disappearing content.
If Facebook is fully focused on groups and content that’s here today and gone tomorrow, this means most marketers will need to rethink their strategies.
We did a quick poll of more than 1700 marketers, and 77% feel that FB is making it harder to market on-platform.
Picture a day where content is only discovered within groups and cannot be shared outside of them.
Think of a day where you must make disappearing visual content—every day—to stay in front of your audience.
This is not an unreal possibility. You need a plan.
Facebook Update
Last week at Facebook’s developer conference, they officially announced a re-design of the desktop and mobile user interface. Goals: more emphasis on stories, groups, events. Mobile roll-out started last week. Desktop roll-out will start any day. The News Feed has been moved and “demoted” in priority. What does this mean for Business Pages? Less visibility if you aren’t paying to play.
Even the Facebook Experts Are Promoting Email Marketing
I know you get tired of me on the soapbox. So here is Courtney Donahue Foster on HER soapbox. She’s a FACEBOOK guru but she’s promoting email marketing as a necessary alternative. So if you aren’t emailing your clients, call me today! Let’s get started!
Her recent email said –
“Imagine a marketing platform not limited by a newsfeed algorithm.
A platform that you own.
A platform that allows your followers to actually see all of your content.
A platform with the highest ROI of any marketing platform.
That platform? Email marketing.
And if that doesn’t thrill you right now, I want to change that.
Because at the end of the day, you don’t own your Facebook likes, your YouTube views, or your Instagram hearts.
But you do own your mailing list.
And if you’re in this entrepreneurship thing for real, if you’re ready to hike up your big kid business pants and start using strategies that stick, you need to build something you own.”
How to Optimize Your Facebook Post
Get the biggest bang for your buck by writing a great post.
Example: Thank you @Jean Flis for your great presentation today at @WSRG. I love your “core, pop, fizz” mantra. I can do that! @Heartlink
- Go to the person’s business page to make your post. That’s where they really need your support.
- @Jean Flis will put the post on Jean’s personal FB profile. Only do this if you think she would want the post on her personal page. If in doubt, skip the personal page.
- @WSRG will put the post on the WSRG networking group page. That’s where Jean made the presentation so you want the thank you to show up there.
- @Heartlink will put the post on another group page that you know Jean belongs to.
- Adding the comment about “core, pop, fizz” gives other people who see the post something to respond to, to “engage” with since FB wants engagement.
The @ sign tags the page. When you start typing the WSR, FB will give you a list of WSR… pages to select from.
Yes, you could add a photo of Jean doing her presentation to add more power to the post.
THANK YOU Jean Flis with Premier Design Jewelry for being my example. Jean is the go to gal for anything related to jewelry.
If you manage a Facebook Group, you need to be sure you are gathering emails from that group! Facebook owns the group. You own the emails! And having emails open so many marketing doors for you. Here are detailed instructions from Social Media Examiner on how to gather emails from a group.
Facebook Reality
This snippet is from an article from Social Media Examiner about gathering emails from your Facebook Group. Good article! I’ll share it with you shortly. But what I want you to read today in the info here about Facebook – what they own, who they are, how they operate.
“Facebook groups can be an awesome way to share content, engage with your followers, and build your brand. They’re also powerful tools for growing your email list. When running a group is part of your marketing strategy, getting email leads from your group is important for several reasons, the most critical being that you don’t own your Facebook group. Facebook does.
Relying solely on a Facebook group for interacting with members is risky because Facebook can ban your account or shut down your group anytime. Although Facebook doesn’t ban groups or accounts often, a more likely risk is that Facebook could throttle your group’s organic reach. Many group owners (myself included) have noticed Facebook favoring paid traffic over groups’ organic reach.
With these risks in mind, I suggest you plan your audience growth around the worst-case scenario and focus on growing something you own. When you collect email addresses to build your list, you own that list.”
Please keep this reality in mind when you plan your marketing strategy and the phases of it that relate to Facebook. Always know your risks! Facebook is too big to ignore. But you can control your use of their software and their ownership of your data.
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-groups-for-business-how-to-guide-for-marketers/