Tag Archives: Facebook Marketing

20 Ways To Do Local Social Media Marketing on a Budget [Infographic]

20 Ways To Do Local Social Media Marketing on a Budget - 315(1)

20 Ways To Do Local Social Media Marketing on a Budget - 315(1)

Inspired by my friend Christian Karasiewicz at Social Chefs blog post “20 Ways to Do Local Social Media on a Budget” I created this infographic to illustrate his points.

Create Contests for Followers

Give followers a way to engage with a brand. They’ll be personally invested in winning and this will create repeat visitors. While any contest will bring some level of engagement, giving away bigger prizes, or making it simple for followers to participate, can help expand a business’ online footprint.

An example of this might include giving away a $100 gift certificate for your product to a random person who likes/shares a specific Facebook post or retweets a tweet from a Twitter account.

Take Realistic Pictures

Not every photo needs to be professionally shot and edited to make a big impact. Followers, especially local followers, are drawn to genuine images.

Take photos with a simple phone camera and post without retouching. This practice is authentic and leads to more engagement. Additionally, taking pictures with a smartphone costs nothing. Professional photographs can cost hundreds of dollars and take time before they’re ready for publishing.

Share Content to Groups

The ability to share content to groups is a powerful tool that costs nothing and can expose a business to a large number of people.

Usually, this is as simple as choosing the “Share” option on a Facebook post. But use this in moderation. Constantly sharing everything to every group can result in your posts being deleted or marked spam.

Thanks, Christian! As always this is brilliant. Keep up the good work!

20 ways to do local social media marketing on a budget

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Facebook 360 Photos [Infographic]

Facebook 360 Photos -315

Facebook 360 Photos -315

In the landscape of social media, a business owner needs to leverage eye-catching content to grab the attention of prospective customers to drive them into the sales funnel. Facebook 360 photos may be just the thing!

Facebook’s New Feature: Facebook 360 Photos

Using this feature requires either a 360 photo Smartphone, a tablet app, or a panorama image on a phone. The code to recognize and display 360 photos is built into Facebook’s pic-recognition platform once the images are uploaded. Hospitality and tourism based businesses have used Facebook 360 photos to captivate their social networks and thus earn more visitors.

The average Facebook user has full access to this feature. World travelers, for example, can post breathtaking images of island mountains or of their favorite restaurant giving a sort of virtual tour in an uploaded single snapshot. It’s the new age of virtual reality and Facebook looks to be a major player.

Thanks to our friends across the pond at EReviews.co.uk for this wonderful infographic on this new Facebook feature.

Facebook 360 photos- Short version

 

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Facebook Ads Text Rules

Facebook Ads Text Rules - 315

Facebook Ads Text Rules - 315

Finally, Facebook has done something about its restrictive ad rules!

The 20% rule – which limited the amount of text accompanying an ad to just 20% of the overall surface area of a 5 x 5 grid – was really starting to grind on marketers’ nerves. Logos counted toward the text limit, text on a t-shirt someone was wearing counted, etc. The rejection process was an automatic algorithm based on the grid. So there was no option to explain the text was a part of the image.

Understandably, Facebook Ads need to minimize text clutter. Their research shows that the reading audience prefers clean, readable lines and images over writing. However, it was making it difficult for marketers to get their message across.

Why the Facebook Ad Rule Change?

This is simply a case of a giant company trying to balance the desires of its customer base and its B2B relationships. Through research, Facebook consumers have shown that they prefer ads with less text. Business owners and marketers that use the social networking giant to promote their wares have flooded Facebook with complaints about the restrictions and confusing parameters.

Perhaps more importantly, Facebook noticed that ads were being rejected at a clip that was losing them too much money. So it was necessary for them to make a shift in their stringent policy.

Specifics of the New Rule

As a consequence of receiving so many complaints about rejected ads, Facebook has sought to streamline the ad-acceptance algorithm. Most importantly, they’ve eliminated the most unfriendly part of the code: ads are not rejected based on text density any longer. All advertisements are judged by these categories:

  • The “OK” Category – This Facebook ad has very little text; if any. It appears to be the one that gets the most positive response from consumers.
  • The “Low” Category – this section is reserved for the ads that were just barely acceptable under the old 20% algorithm.
  • The “Medium” Category – this category is reserved for ads that would NOT have made it in under the old rule. Now, it allows advertisers to populate the image with text boxes around the picture.
  • The “High” Category – These Facebook ads were rejected outright. Although they are no longer declined by the system, these text-laden ads will be charged a higher cost.
  • Text density = higher CPC. It allows businesses to have their ads seen, but they’ll have to pay a cost if there’s more than the optimal number of characters reducing the allowable image area.

Ad Exceptions

In case some of the Facebook ad changes come across as too financially restrictive, marketers should know that the higher costs won’t apply to the following ads:

  • comic-strips
  • calligraphy
  • video game screenshots
  • event posters, concert posters and movie posters
  • infographics
  • app graphics
  • album and book covers
  • legal content

Of course, if there’s still some confusion left after the new rule changes, businesses can always use Facebook’s native “Create Ad” function to streamline the process and make it easy to select the correct category.  So, while the total restriction is now gone, the reach of a text-heavy add is reduced compared to its non-text heavy image ad counterpart.

Remember:  Simple, clean, and concise is the way to go on text within image ads.  They key is the image itself!  Use people and images that grab attention.

In short, the new feature changes help marketers frustrated with the text limitations affecting their previous ads.

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The New Facebook Page Layout

The New Facebook Page Layout - 315

The New Facebook Page Layout - 315

In mid-July of 2016, Facebook began a selective rollout of yet another new layout for Facebook Pages, with no apparent pattern behind the deployment of  who got the new layout first. Some users noticed the difference immediately and began comparing the new configuration to previous versions. At this point, the vast majority of Pages Admins have the new layout.

Why a New Facebook Page Layout?

Good question!  It has not been clearly explained why the modified layout has been deployed and what purposes they hoped to accomplish.  In some ways it’s a throwback to older versions with the apps being visible in the left navigation once again.

Overview of layout changes

Here are some of the changes which users have seen on their Facebook Pages layout:

  • Call To Action Button

    One of the more obvious and interesting changes is the Call To Action buttons. They have been enlarged for increased visibility and have been relocated on the page. They are now situated directly under the tab links, and the new buttons are labeled “Send Email”, “Request Appointment”, “Watch Video”, “Call Now”, “Shop Now”, as well as a few others.

  • Shift of Page App Tabs

    The Page App Tabs have moved to beneath the logo, so every single tab created can be seen. What a boon for TabSite users!!

    Now that all page tabs are visible, some users may want to remove a few to avoid clutter, and shift those of importance to the top.

  • Crisper Cover Photo

    Facebook has cleaned up the cover image by removing the logo from overlaying on the cover photo. This has the effect of highlighting the photo and drawing more attention to the larger image, which now extends across the entire column. Facebook displays cover images at 828×315.

    See: https://www.facebook.com/help/125379114252045. For cover images with logos or text (or shades of red), use a PNG file format for a more crisp display. For a hack to display your full cover image content on both desktop and mobile, use these dimensions: 828×465.

  • Relocated Logo Image

    The logo image is a bit bigger than it was and has of course shifted to the top left.

  • Relocated Like, Message, and Share Buttons

    Similar to the page tab links, the buttons for “Like”, “Message”, and “Share” have been moved below the cover image, and slightly to the left.

  • Repositioned Page Insights

    Page Insights for Page Admins now appears underneath the cover photo, instead of the prior position at the right of the image.

  •  Repositioned Admin Menu

    The menu for Page Administrators is now situated on the left-hand side, rather than beneath the cover photo.

  • Page Info is Relocated

    Info relevant to the page has been lowered and relocated to the right-hand side. The “About” and “Promotions” have also been relocated to this new spot.

  • Increased Search Bar Functionality

    The search bar now lets fans search for specific posts from the page!

  • More Spacious Feel

    The overall effect is that the page seems less cluttered. This is because much of the material crammed in at the page top has been evenly distributed across the page.

Cumulative effect of  changes

One of the biggest and most obvious impacts of the changes come from the fact that the logo image has been accentuated, perhaps in response to user request. For businesses, this image represents branding and company identity, so the greater emphasis and more prominent positioning of this image will be enthusiastically welcomed.

The strategy behind the re-positioning of some page elements could mean that Facebook intends to emphasize those areas, perhaps in response to user feedback. Whatever the reasoning, these changes are noticeable, particularly for App Tabs.

So that’s a wrap on the most recent Facebook Page layout changes.  Be sure to spend some time on your Page and others to get a feel for the new layout and make any necessary adjustments to optimize your Page.

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Facebook Ad Targeting [Infographic]

Facebook Ad Targeting [Infographic] - 315

Facebook Ad Targeting [Infographic] - 315Facebook Ad Targeting uses the social media site’s extensive information about their users to allow you to set detailed and unique profiles for your client demographic. The number of fields is expansive and includes:

  • Age
  • Location
  • Gender
  • Race
  • Religion
  • Education Level
  • Financial Factors (Income, Home Type and Value)
  • Political Leaning
  • Interests, Activities, and Hobbies
  • Purchase of Your Products and Services

Each of these can be configured to be inclusive or exclusive, so you can tailor your ads to only display to those who haven’t used your product before or those who use similar services.

You can also add custom information from your own databases such as a list of specific Facebook profiles or emails. By refining the targets for your Facebook advertisements the Click-through-Rate is maximized and you get the most from your marketing investment.

A tip of the hat to my friends over at SearchEngineJournal.com for creating this infographic checklist.

Facebook-Ad-Targeting

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