Category Archives for "Facebook"

Whether you are holding an every week special or a brand new event at your location of business-Facebook Events are your friend. And oh yeah, did I mention that to create one them is completely FREE.

Similar to a page post, some of you may have ‘boosted’ an event before from your business page. This option allows you to put money behind the event/post to have Facebook target the area/demographics you choose for an allotted amount of time. This is of course an effective way to get your business or event in the news feeds of your target customers.

But there doesn’t need to be monetary contribution behind this advertising.
Creating an event is 100% free, and it is tied to a location based off of your selected address when setting up the event itself. Therefore when someone in your area goes to view events, you will be included in their results page.

I can speak from experience that I myself, have gone to the Facebook Events tab in search of more than simply to make sure I didn’t miss a friend’s birthday. I have discovered several new restaurants/bars and even a concert in my local area that I had never heard of, all from these free Facebook Events.

Once someone clicks to respond to the event: whether it be that they are ‘going’ or ‘interested’ that response can organically show up in their friends’ feeds along with your event preview and link. If you are new to the concept, or want a refresher, below outlines the 3 steps to creating your free advertisement.

To Create an Event:

1. Go to your Business Facebook Page, and select ‘Events’ in the left hand main menu.
2. Click to ‘Create Event’.
3. Add Photo/Video and Event Detail in the Pop Up Screen
   TIP: If you have a Weekly Special-simply select ‘Weekly’ for the Frequency and Facebook will run it for you so you only need to create the event once! Pretty neat, huh?

To Edit Events simply return to the Events tab on your page and you can view and select your list of upcoming events.

I recommend taking advantage of this free advertising that Facebook has gifted us. Use this also as an opportunity to look into your business model and create some events or specials that you can gather some hype around. Simply because to you, your business’ event seems ‘run of the mill’ that does not mean it isn’t event worthy!

Lauren Miles
Client Success Manager at Ampliphi Social Media Strategies

Boosting allows you to choose a post that’s already on your business page and extend the reach by spending money to promote it.

In today’s world of social media, paying Facebook to show your posts to more people is incredibly helpful and most importantly, easy.

To do a great boosted post, we encourage two things to begin the process.

Define a goal for the post

Setting a goal will help you define success in the campaign. Whether it’s traffic to a web page, engagement on the post, or page likes, figuring it out ahead of time allows you to optimize the campaign and judge how successful it is.

Make sure that you have quality visuals

Whether it is an image or a video, it’s important that the quality is as good as it can be. Fuzzy pictures or shaky phone videos are simple to create but don’t always transfer well to engagement.

To get started with the actual post you’re going to upload your visual to your Facebook page. Then make sure you write some compelling copy and tag any person or organization that you want to have included in your post. Also, you should always include a call to action and a link, if necessary, to give people a way to engage.

Next, once the post is published, you can either click the “boost post” button or you can use the ads manager to boost your post.

If you’re using the boost post button, it’s very self-explanatory on how to complete this process. The best part about using the button is that you can select an audience of “people who like your page and their friends”. This is the easiest way to reach people who are already familiar with your page and might not have seen the post.

If you’re using the ads manager, use the hamburger menu and select ‘page posts’. Then select the ‘published posts’.

Check out your stats and see which posts are performing well, based on the highest reach and largest engagement.

Select the post you wish to boost and select ‘create ad’ from the actions dropdown.

Name the campaign and ad set, select your objective and save to draft. Once you’re here you can go ahead and proceed how you would build an ad inside ads manager. Choose a proper audience based on who you’d like to target, set an appropriate budget, and select an objective that meets your goal.

(Creative used is video)

(Creative used is an image with link)

Another pro-tip of boosting a post is that with certain objectives you have the option to only pay for results. If there is a strong call-to-action, we recommend paying for engagements, not impressions. You can even manually enter a bid based on what those engagements are worth to you. Or you can just leave it on automatic bidding and Facebook will get the most post engagements at the best price.

Lastly, the creative inside the ad will already be done because it’s a post that’s been published to your business page, so when boosting there is no need to worry about that.

So, if you have a specific message or a post you’d like to build engagement on, don’t be afraid to boost away!

Nowadays, social media is not just another platform for sharing pictures, life events and what you had for lunch. It is also used to voice your opinion about many different things. The digital revolution has changed traditional marketing and consumers have learned to take their inquiries, comments and criticisms online. Therefore, any business or brand for that matter, must learn how to integrate social listening in their marketing strategy.

Imagine the amount of insights you can acquire from a certain market that is made up entirely of consumers who are talking about your brand. Social listening is the process of tracking and identifying what is being said about a specific brand or industry. It is important to monitor consumers’ tone when they speak about your brand via keywords, as they can help you leverage your insights and discover new ways to create content focused on your audience. Although social listening and social monitoring often go hand in hand, there is a certain difference between these two. Social listening does not merely focus on close monitoring through personal response on comments and queries. The main goal is to thoroughly analyze consumers’ sentiments and be able to extract pivotal insights from these conversations in order to create a strategy that is based on what people are saying. Think about it this way: social monitoring is like a cure – as a certain problem arises, it will help you be aware of and act on it on the spot. However, social listening is more like prevention – rather than just dealing with the problem after it arose, listening will help you prevent the problem from happening in the first place.

Why is Social Listening Important?

Brand Reputation

When you actively listen to what social media says about your brand, you know for sure that positive and negative feedback is inevitable. The thing is, social listening will help you identify and successfully recognize harmful threads before they create a lasting impact your brand. A good reputation is what allows a company to continue flourishing, and thus contribute to the entire brand health. 

Product Development

Social listening also gives more room for improvement. From the word itself, listening will help you get valuable feedback that could be the basis for your product development plan. Draw out an effective solution by focusing on the points that people find unsatisfying and highlight whatever works well for your brand.

Key Influencer

In this generation where even ordinary people can have an extended reach or impact on social media, it is also practical to know who has the power to influence consumers in a relevant marketplace. Influencers from different fields or industries love to discuss products online, particularly those they personally patronize. This may help you come up with a strategy if you know how to take advantage of their social / online connection.

Brand Engagement

What is the most logical thing to do after learning what consumers have to say about your product? Engage. Actively communicate with them and manage the growing brand loyalty so you can look forward to a potentially lifelong commitment between your brand and its users. In the age of digital marketing, it has become easier to reach out to your consumers to properly address their concerns through mobile and social media. Brand engagement is the key in making consumers feel that their voice is being heard and that their opinions actually matter.

Social listening, in a nutshell, will allow your brand to be at the forefront; it is just a matter of addressing and properly acting on your consumers’ wants and needs.

One of the most frequently asked questions I hear when working with clients on the Facebook platform is, “Should I boost it?” More specifically, should they boost a Facebook post they just created. My reaction varies every time I hear it because I know the client’s intentions are good, but sometimes it’s hard to explain my reasoning for not boosting. So let’s put it down in writing.

In the marketing world today, Facebook ads are just about the best way to spend a dollar. As long as that dollar is spent wisely!

There are 2 main ways to create a Facebook Ad. Boosted Posts and Sponsored Content through Ads Manager..

BOOSTED POSTS are what people are most familiar with because every post you create on your business page will have the option to, “Boost Post”.

Boosted posts are easier and much less intimidating for people not incredibly familiar with Facebook ads, such as the small business owner or employee. You can select a post that’s already on your page, choose a target audience, enter a total budget, and how long you would like it to run and voila. Let the reactions and engagement begin!

Boosting a post is great for brand awareness and can provide valuable social proof. Also, if your post contains a link, you can encourage people to visit your website. But again, that post MUST contain a link.

An example of what type of posts I’d boost are announcement posts. Whether it be a big company announcement like winning an award, an expansion, a new hire or announcing a big upcoming event, these types of posts are great for the fans you already have and people close to them, which is what boosting is good for.

FACEBOOK SPONSORED CONTENT created through Ads Manager is what I use 99% of the time.

You have much more creative control over what the sponsored content looks like in every way possible. The 20% text rule still exists (only 20% of your image can contain text) but you can include a headline (the larger copy right below the image), a news feed link description (the smaller copy right below the headline) and an optional display link which shows up in the lower left hand corner. There is also a large selection of Call To Action buttons including “Watch More” for videos, “Shop Now” for e-commerce and “Donate Now” for non-profits.

Another benefit of using Ads Manager to create your Facebook sponsored content is the sheer amount of available objectives. You can optimize your campaign for exactly what you’re looking for. Awareness, consideration, and conversion are the 3 main sections, and each section has multiple campaign objectives to select from. Obviously each piece of sponsored content can only have one objective, but there are many options, including Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, App Installs, Video Views, Lead Generation, Post Engagement, Page Likes, Event Responses, Messages, Conversions, Catalog Sales and Store Visits.

Another major advantage worth mentioning is the ability to target exactly who you’re looking for. There is some available audience targeting when Boosting a post but not nearly to the extent that you can when using Ads Manager. Not only can you target a custom audience that you’ve created but you can also overlap that audience with another detail. For example, let’s say I created an audience of visitors to my website over the past 60 days and then I wanted to narrow that audience down to those visitors to the site who live in Wisconsin, can do! And that’s just where it begins!

Some additional highlights inside Ads Manager are you can choose what you want to pay for (clicks, impressions, etc) and where you want your sponsored content to be seen (mobile, iOS devices only, desktop, right column, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram Feed or Stories, Messenger, etc.)

Plus, you can also Split Test your sponsored content making it much easier to figure out where your money is best spent. (I’ll expand on this in my next blog)

Whichever direction you decide to go, Boosting Posts or using Ads Manager, it’s a win-win. Facebook gives you the platform for the best audience targeting at a relatively inexpensive price…at least for now. So promote away!