Archives April 2014

If you haven’t heard about Facebook Custom Audiences yet, you are missing a good opportunity to maximize the use of this powerful feature of Facebook Ads.

In a nutshell, custom audiences lets advertisers find their existing audiences among people who are already on Facebook using previously acquired information (such as email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs, or App user IDs). Basically, you can target your offline list with one of these data sets.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING CUSTOM AUDIENCES?

First, you can create an ad that will directly appeal to a specific group or audience. This will increase likelihood that people will engage with the ad because the message is tailored to them. Studies have shown that because of the specific targeting you can do with custom audiences, advertisers on Facebook are seeing as much as 6X increase on their return on ad spend.

While uploading your own email list and targeting ads to those individuals is a great way to target, my all time favorite option that custom audiences lets you create is lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences are people identified by Facebook with similar characteristics to the ones in your custom audiences. As a result this will let you reach a wider audience that will more likely be interested in your business because they have similar profiles to the list of people you already have a relationship with for your business. These lookalike audiences can make it easier to achieve your goals because in most cases Facebook will generate a lookalike audience that is 4-5X your list size.

Important Note: Your list must be at least 2500 to ensure you have “meaningful” list for your ads.

Here is a quick how-to guide to get you started setting up your custom audiences.

Step 1:

Go to power editor – https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor/ and choose “Custom Audience”.  Keep in mind that custom and look alike audiences can only be created in power editor.

Step 2:

Choose the type of audience. In this example, we’ll choose “Data File Custom Audience”

Step 3:

Create your audience. Choose “Email” – Make sure you type in a relevant name and description. This will come in handy when you set up another campaign in the future with similar or different audiences. – Upload your data file (make sure its in .csv or txt format) – Check the box that says you Agree to Facebook Terms and Conditions – Then click “Create Audience”

Before you start creating ads, its important to know that it will take about 30 minutes for your custom audience to be ready to use.  I’ve seen it take as long as 24 hours to upload so check back the next day if it’s taking a long time to upload.

Once your audience is ready, you can now create an ad the way you normally would. The Custom Audience feature used to only be available in Power Editor (which can be hard to use) but you can now choose your Custom Audiences in the Ads Manager.

You’ll also want to be aware that not ALL of the email addresses you use to create your Custom Audience are going to be available.  The email address you have has to also be the SAME email address that the person used to set up their Facebook account.   I’ll typically see about a 50% match.  So if you upload 5000 email addresses, approximately 2500 will be available for you to create a Custom Audience for and then advertise to using Facebook ads.

I know, I know – you’re frustrated because you are doing the RIGHT thing and being consistent about posting on your Facebook page – the problem is that your REACH is down – SIGNIFICANTLY! In this post, I’m going to share a little secret with you…a way that you can increase your fan reach – for FREE!  And what’s better than FREE?  Good Value.  That’s why YOU are going to take this information you learn and SHARE it with your fans.  They’re going to love it because they’ll never miss another update from your brilliant business again! Watch this quick video to learn how to TURN ON GET NOTIFICATIONS on pages you like so you don’t miss posts from that page.

I hope that little Facebook tip was valuable to you – now go share this post with your fans so they can help you out by increasing your reach and even better – increase their own reach on their pages.

Are you busy?  ME TOO!  If you’re a business owner or a social media manager then you have TONS on your plate.  I get it.  Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done.

That’s why I’d like to help make Facebook even easier for you to use.  This post is going to share with you 3 reasons why you should put your Facebook page on Auto-Pilot and then tell you exactly how to do it.  Ready?  Let’s go!

3 REASON WHY YOU SHOULD PUT YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE ON AUTOPILOT.

1.  TO SAVE TIME.

Using the Facebook scheduler will definitely help you save time you have to be on Facebook. You don’t need to be on Facebook to wait for the days and times that your fans are most active before sharing your posts. Here are some ideas of posts that you can schedule in advance:

• Evergreen content or posts that will always be considered up-to-date and that will always be of interest to your fans. Like FAQ’s, tips and tricks, how-to’s, resource lists and unchanging views or arguments on industry issues.
• Facebook contests that you will need to share at different times so all your fans from different parts of the world can participate.

2.  TO BE CONSISTENT

Using the Facebook scheduler allows consistent and reliable posting. It is easy to get distracted doing other things so it is easy to forget to post.

3.  TO NOT “FLOOD” YOUR FANS.

Spread out your posts in different hours of the day/ days of the week rather than posting them all in one go. This will ensure your fans are not flooded with tons of updates from you.

There are various ways to put your Facebook page on autopilot especially with the use of third-party apps like Hootsuite, SocialOomph, GroSocial, Buffer, SproutSocial etc…

However, there is also a way to schedule posts within Facebook using the Facebook scheduler. Here is how easy it is to schedule your posts right in Facebook:

1. Choose the type of post you want to create (ex: Status, Photo / Video)
2. Type in any details you want to add
3. Attach photos or videos if you want to
4. Click on the bottom left, choose the date and time you want the post to appear
5. Click Schedule

You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 15-minute intervals. You can also choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately in the appropriate place on your Page’s Timeline. All times correspond to the current time zone you’re in.

To see all of your scheduled posts all you have to do is go to the “Activity Log�? that can be seen at the top left of your Facebook page.

Have you put your Facebook page on autopilot yet?

One of the most common question that gets asked when managing a Facebook page is “When is the best time to post on Facebook?”

I have seen a lot of articles and infographics with various answers to this question. Here is a very good example I found from Social media data expert, Dan Zarrella of Hubspot where it showed that updates posted later in the day bring in more shares and likes, but they tend to peak around 8 p.m. And posts published on Saturdays and Sundays receive higher like percentage than those posted during the weekdays.

But there is actually a way to know the specific time and day you can reach more fans of your page, that is through Facebook Insights. Wondering how you would do it?
Here is a step-by-step guide:

STEP 1. CLICK ON “SEE INSIGHTS”

STEP 2. GO TO “POSTS” AND GO TO “WHEN YOUR FANS ARE ONLINE”

I have also recorded a quick how-to video here, watch it:

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO KNOW THE BEST TIME OF DAY TO POST ON YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE?

FIRST, TO RAISE YOUR FANS’ ENGAGEMENT

Engaged fans are the people who click on your content to view a photo, play a video, like, comment or share. To generate more engagement reactions, tweak your content to ask questions, publish content that your fans can resonate with so they will “like” it! Make sure to spot existing content with a lot of engagement and create similar posts in the future. Using and continuing this process will increase your organic/viral reach.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, IMPROVE YOUR CONVERSION RATE

Conversion rate is the biggest indicator that your Facebook marketing efforts is paying off. In short, the more engaged fans you have, the bigger the probability that they will respond to your call to action like downloading a copy of your free e-book, visiting your website, subscribing to your newsletter or buying your product.