Facebook Advertising 101

October 16, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Facebook, Marketing, PPC 

Facebook is actively used by millions of people all over the world with many of these people logging in on a daily basis.  As a matter of fact, their traffic alone is very close to the amount of traffic that Google gets on a daily basis and it’s growing.

The biggest difference between Facebook and Google however, is that Facebook wants you to stick around for awhile, engage with others, play games, etc.  Whereas Google’s main goal is to get you off of Google.com as quickly as possible.  Now this might sound a little counter-intuitive but Google’s main goal is to deliver to you relevant search results.  If they do, you’ll click off of Google.com and head off to a website that hopefully had your answer.

So while both Google and Facebook get their fair share of traffic, they have different overall goals.

One of the best ways to get traffic is to advertise on Facebook.  And that’s what we’ll touch on here.

When it comes to advertising, I’d have to give the upper-hand to Facebook.  Not only are they more affordable, but they keep statistics on users that range everywhere from their age, their relationship status, what groups they belong to, what their interests are, where they’re located, and more.

As an example, let’s say that you sold hair bows for little girls and you decided to advertise on Facebook.  Using all of this data that Facebook has on their users, you can specifically target users based on all of this data.  Why this is so significant for you as an advertiser, is because you’re not just basing your advertising on keywords much like Google’s program does, but rather you can really nail-down who you want to see your ad.

However, the biggest downfall with Facebook advertising is this.  Let’s say that you decided to show your ad to Moms who have daughters; makes sense right?  Even if those Mom’s see your ad and click on it, they’re likely going to see the ad again quite often as long as you have it running.  Someone searching on Google however, likely is seeking out a very specific keyword such as “hair bows for girls” and the likelihood of them seeing your ad on more than one occasion is rare.

So you want to handle Facebook advertising a little differently.

Instead of just running a generic ad consider using that ad to promote products that someone will want to use on a continuous basis – such as offering a wide array of different colors, sizes, etc., in other words, products that will be wanted by your audience over and over again.

You can also run specials that are only good for a certain period of time.

The key with Facebook advertising is to create a wide variety of advertisements so that the user is always engaged with your product and so they don’t see the same ad over and over again.

Lastly, you can use Facebook as a way to capture leads and add them to your auto-responder program.  This is a big plus for many Facebook advertisers simply because Google has put a kabosh on this kind of advertising.  If you tried to place an ad on Google that led to a lead-capture page, the odds are your ad would get disapproved before anyone could even see it.

In a later post, I’ll create a walk-through that will take you through how to set up a Facebook advertising campaign but for now, if you were considering marketing your product, website or even your Facebook page on Facebook, I highly recommend it.

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The Unsubscribe Message Being Sent Around on Facebook

September 25, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Facebook 

I have had multiple friends post on their Facebook status’ about the “Uncheck Comments and Likes” link.  I’m sure you have too.  Due to the new Facebook update, you too have likely noticed the ticker on the upper right hand side that shows the activities of your friends on other people’s pages.  This might send a few chills up your spine because if you’re able to see this information about your friends, it’s likely they’re seeing yours also.  So here’s what it is and how to fix it.

The Facebook status updates that you may have been seeing might differ from the one below but here’s what one of them says:

Do me a favor: please hover over my name here, wait for the box to load and then hover over the “Subscribe” link. Then uncheck the “Comments and likes” choice. I would rather my comments on friends’ posts not be made public. Thanks** Then repost if you don’t want your EVERY MOVE posted on the right for everyone to see!

Unfortunately, this is erroneous information.  Because this message has been passed around so often, Facebook has added some information to their help page.  For the record, the information that you see on the upper right hand side of your page is called the “Ticker” and the explanation from Facebook is this:

To control stories about your commenting activity in ticker and News Feed, always check who can see the privacy of the posts you’re commenting on.  

When you follow the instructions by your friend, all that this does is stop their comments and likes from showing up in your Ticker or News Feed.

This also means that unsubscribing from a friends “comments and likes” in your News Feed does not have any impact on whether your friends see it when you comment on or like their posts.

Now the best way to fix this is to update your Privacy Settings and Read the information from Facebook about “How Sharing Works Now“.

Here’s what they say in a nutshell:

Whenever you make a post in Facebook, you have a few sharing options.

  1. Let’s you tag who you’re with.
  2. Let’s you say where you are.
  3. Most importantly, the privacy settings.
When you make a post, it’s important that you choose who you are sharing it with.  If you make it public then everyone, anywhere will be able to see that post. 
In order to make your post only available to certain people, you need to choose the drop-down selector and then choose from the following:
All that said, Facebook did mention in their information about the Ticker this:
If you aren’t comfortable with who can see the post, please don’t comment on it or like it.  If you do, a story about your activity will be eligible to appear on Facebook including on your timeline (profile), in News Feed and in ticker.
Mari Smith said it best when she stated:
In any case, I’m of the opinion that to be uber safe, just do not post anything online/on Facebook even under privacy settings that you wouldn’t want all over the web. I know that’s tricky to do for most folks. My favorite feature on Facebook for more private content and conversation is Secret Groups. I have one for several masterminds and for my family.
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See Who Views Your Profile on Facebook – Is it Possible?

August 31, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Facebook 

One of the many messages that gets spread around on Facebook from time to time is the one that says “See who viewed my profile” or at least a message that’s similar to that.

To set your mind at ease, there is no way currently within Facebook that you can tell who has viewed your profile.  Whenever you see these messages they tend to be third-party programs that are looking to access your personal information.

That being said, it is good practice to be sure that you’re profile is protected the way you want it to be.  When you’re within Facebook click on “Account” and then click on “Privacy Settings”.  You can then choose which settings to adjust so that you control what’s private and what’s public.

Accessing Privacy Settings in Facebook

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