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Facebook Offers let businesses, brands and organizations share discounts with their customers by posting an offer on their Facebook Page. Facebook Offers is an incredible way to direct new people to your business and increase engagement with existing customers. Offers are designed to have a viral effect because whenever someone claims an offer, it will appear in the News Feed.

HOW TO CREATE A FACEBOOK OFFER

1. Creating your offer is SUPER SIMPLE, it’s as easy as posting any other content such as a status update , photo or video.

Here’s how you should start.  Pretend you are going to post a status update on your page…except click on Offer/Event as shown below.

2. Create your coupon – Add your 25-character long title and 90-character long description. Include some strong sense of urgency such as “limited offer only” “while supplies last” or “today only”. This is proven to be the most effective in getting your fans to TAKE ACTION!

3. Upload your ad image with the following image specs: image ratio: 1.91:1 and image size: 1200 x 627 pixels. To learn more about image dimensions, click here.

4. You can opt to limit the number of claims and select an expiration date. You will need to decide on your budget. A $15 budget in theory, is fine for a fan page with 4000 or less fans.

5. Choose your audience.

6. Schedule your offer, set up Online Redemption Link, Terms and Conditions and Click “Create Offer” 

As soon as the coupon goes live and users click on it, the coupon code is sent via email.

Using Offers to Organically Increase Reach
To super-charge the organic reach your page gets, you should make an offer so irresistible that it can’t help but result in massive fan engagement. Giving away something for free or at a huge discount will most likely result in your fans liking and sharing. You might also see improvement in your page’s organic reach, even for other posts not related to the offer and don’t forget – Make sure it’s EASY to redeem the offer.  The easier you make the process, the more engagement you’ll get.

You might have also heard the recent news of Facebook launching Call to Action buttons. These are amazing!!!  The thing to note is that you MUST use these in Power Editor which can be a tricky tool for some businesses.  However, if you’re already using Power Editor or would like to give a try, you can make your offers even more compelling but using these new call to action buttons.

The new Call to Action buttons include:

1. Shop Now
2. Learn More
3. Sign Up
4. Book Now
5. Download

Here’s a quick image that shows you how the Shop Now call to action button would look:

You can learn more about Call to Action buttons here.

There are so many uses for Facebook Offers and the new call to action buttons.  If you haven’t set one up yet, go try it now and let me know how it worked for you!

Happy Offers!

Ever wonder how the heck you can respond as a business owner to comments people post on your Facebook business page?  I get it!  So many things to remember.  Let me help….

Allowing people to comment on your Business page creates a welcome feeling for fans.

As the page admin, Facebook allows you to reply as well as tag your fans to get their attention. This starts a thread of conversation and creates valuable engagement.

Watch this video quick video to know how to reply to posts on your Facebook page:

1. Go to Edit page – Edit Settings.

2. Go to Settings.

3. Scroll down the list till you see “Replies”. Click Edit.

4. Check to see if comment/replies are turned ON for your page.
If not, you’ll want to check the box and then, Click Save Changes.

As a bonus, I created a few tips on how to improve your conversation and interaction skills on your Page:

• Create a positive, FUN, and respectful environment by commenting yourself in a professional manner.
• Be helpful by offering additional info such as including a link to useful or relevant information.
• If your business actually made a mistake or one of your employees didn’t treat a customer respectfully, first, apologize.  You can do this first and then try to correct the situation by offering  a free service or product after the apology.
• Keep the thread topic focused on the content posted.
• Tag only the fans involved in the thread conversation, avoid unnecessary tagging of other people.
• Create basic rules on comments made by spammers or bashers. This will make it easier for you to keep them at bay.

Hope this helps.

Do you run a charity or have a goal to launch a charity soon?   Then you are going to love this new feature from Facebook that allows you to collect money through donations directly from your Facebook page!!  Wow, cool stuff, huh?!

Facebook introduces the Donate Button for non-profit pages. The company first tested this new feature in November through Red Cross after the Typhoon Haiyan disaster in the Philippines. Though Facebook’s representatives did not mention the actual amount raised from the campaign, the feature allowed users to donate through a notification found right on the top of their News Feeds.

Right now, 19 non-profit organizations have signed-up as launch partners, including DonorsChoose.org, Boys And Girls Club Of America, World Wildlife Fund, UNICEF, Red Cross, and Kiva. These groups have the Donate Button show up on the top of their Facebook Pages and at the bottom of their News Feed posts. After some tweaks more, Facebook will allow other non-profits to use the feature by simply signing up here. Upon clicking the button, users will be allowed to donate through credit card or Paypal.

Steps

1. If you don’t have a Facebook page yet, you’ll need to create one.  Refer to this previous blog post on how to create a Facebook Page. Make sure to select The “Cause or Community” or “Company, Organization or Institution” pages as a charity fan page.

* If you need to assign team members as page administrators, you can add them as you set up the page or do it later.

2. Find the Donate Button Application by First Giving. On the top menu, click “Create Button”

3. Type in the name of your charity or organization. Results will pop up below the text box. Click on your charity name when it appears on the list.

4. Install the app on your Facebook Page. Choose the page you have created to install the donation button “Install on Fan Page” button to the right of your page’s profile picture.

5. Click “Add Donation Button Creator” . A popup notification will appear and ask permission so the app can access your page. This will add the app to your page.

6. You should be able to find the Donate app next to“Photos”

7. To edit the button setting, click on the “Donate” button. As administrator, you should be directed to the page where you can “Edit Donate Settings”. You can now use the button to change the charity or other settings of the donation such as change the verbiage to “Support Our Cause” rather than “Donate”

With this new feature, users will no longer have to go outside of the Facebook platform to donate to your charity. A pop-out window will appear on Facebook and will make the donation process Easy as 1-2-3!

Here’s what it will look like when you’re all done…

Donors can choose how much to give and can enter payment details or just use the ones already saved on Facebook. The easy pop-out guarantees you’re charity will boost conversion rates and raise more funds for projects in need.

Now go raise some money for your cause and let me know in the comments below what charity YOU are passionate about – I’d love to hear

Are you a local business?  Do you have a brick and mortar store?  Then you’ll definitely want to keep reading!!

Check-ins is a Facebook mobile feature which allows users to discover and share their favorite locations to friends. This feature is great if you have a physical location and you want your shop to be talk of the town. It’s also a great way to get your store noticed by people who might have not otherwise known you had a retail location.

You can best utilize Facebook checkins by doing this:

First: To allow people to check in at your Business Page, you will need to select Local Business as page category. Then add a business address on the Page settings. If the page has already been created, you can still change the page category.

1. From the top of your Page, click Edit Page and Select Update Page Info
2. Edit Category
3. Select Local Businesses from the first dropdown menu, then select a more specific category (ex: Restaurant/Cafe) from the second dropdown menu.
4. Click Save Changes

Second: Edit your business address to your Page:

1. At the top of your Page, click Edit Page and select Update Page Info

2. Edit Address

3. Enter your business address then check the box next to Show this map on your Page

4. Click Save Changes

Third: People can also check in at Pages with locations they are into. Even if you’ve never made a Page for your business; people may still be able to check in by creating a new location. If you happen to see duplicate Pages regarding your business, it is because people has added your location so they can check in. To fix this, you as an administrator can claim and merge the duplicates, by making your page as an Official Page. Click here to learn how…

Checking in is just one of the cool Facebook features you can use if you have a local business. There are also Facebook Reviews, Facebook Offers, and Facebook Promotions that you can use to get your store noticed.

It’s hard as a business to understand how to navigate your customer’s feedback online – whether it’s negative or positive.  Many of my clients are paralyzed when left to respond to posts or comments on their page and when it’s negative feedback – all hell usually breaks loose internally.

Business owners need to understand how best to respond to these types of social scenarios and Facebook recently unveiled the 6 trends they found after a full day dedicated to Compassion-focused research.

Facebook’s 4th Compassion Research Day was held Thursday December 5th at their Menlo Park, Calif. HQ.

Here’s what was on the agenda:

• What happens around the world when somebody uses emoticons,
• The things they learned about how teens navigate cyber-bullying as well as suggested tools to support them.
• Providing tools to veteran users and affiliation.
• What does and does not work in what they learned about difficult status updates.

In this event, the compassion team discovered six important trends, while working with researchers from from Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, Stanford University, Northeastern University, Claremont McKenna University, as well as other institutions.

Prior to the introduction of the six trends, Facebook said that:

Conflicts, as well as other challenges in relationships are impossible to avoid, in both online and offline situations. As these are the realities of life, researchers are now beginning to discover how non-verbal rules in human interaction affect attitudes and behavior online.

Facebook, while working with top researchers studying the science of emotion, is now digging into how conflict affects users’ lives on the web – transcending language, culture values and social norms on how they define as respectful behavior.

…the six trends were:

1. Users can create a safer, more respectful online environment.
   In situations in which Facebook’s community standards are not violated, but people are still unsatisfied, Facebook will suggest utilizing messaging tools and engaging more to pro-active conversations. According to Facebook, 85% of the time users are asked to remove photos that other users find embarrassing, 65% of message recipients feels positive, and 25 percent feels neutral.
2. People accept feedback graciously.
   About 63% Facebook users reacted positively on messages about the controversial posts they made. 62% said that they have no issues on being asked to delete posts of concern.
3. Most people do not mean to offend others.
   Only 1 out of 10 users who are asked to remove a post update admitted that they made it such to provoke others or get a message across.
4. People will use the tools offered to them, if they are effective.
   Facebook’s team said that when they began to implement solutions to help alerting users about controversial content, it only provided a blank message box to fill in, with just 20% users would send a ticket. Now, about 3.9 million conversations weekly are being facilitated using updated tools.
5. Emoticons help people express themselves better online.
   Facebook reported that users uses emoticons with “impressive levels of accuracy”. This is especially helpful to people from South America and North Africa.
6. Approaching an old problem with new tools:
   The social network mentioned its Bullying Prevention Hub, as well as “new contextual resources are the heart of the Facebook product.”

Watch the event presentation here:

As a company, business or brand: have you encountered an uncomfortable situation on Facebook? How did you handle it?