Here's a quick post for you (I know many of my recent posts have been pretty long).

If you have an email database of your customers and prospects and you are using Facebook advertising to promote your page or posts, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be advertising directly to your database. While I don't recommend jumping in headfirst, you should be jumping in nonetheless.

It's easy. It's almost too easy. This is where, as I've posted in the past, you have to be measured and strategic with your advertising. If you advertise the wrong content or with the wrong message, you can actually do more damage than good. The last thing you need is a high percentage of users who are seeing your Facebook ads to block or report your posts as spam.

Remember, it doesn't have to be true spam for users to report it. People take their Facebook news feed seriously. If they don't want to see your posts, they'll block you. This prevents others from seeing your posts as well, which means that you quickly start to get a much lower effect for the same amount of money.

Facebook is an excellent venue to generate retargeting, to garner foot traffic through offers and events, and to gain exposure. Your email list is powerful, but it's simply not as effective today as it once was to use it directly for emails. They get blocked. They go unopened. You can reapply their usefulness to Facebook if you do it the right way.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Get Connected!

The Social Media Statistics for 2013 across Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest provide us with an interesting opportunity to review where we may want to spend our social media dollars and time in the coming year. Quicksprout recently published the below infographic outlining the major differences between the three social networks with some key statistics you should be aware of.

With Facebook a clear leader in terms of user base, dwarfing Pinterest (to be fair Pinterest has not been around as long), and doubling the user base of Twitter, you might assume that the largest social network is the best option for your content. However looking a little deeper, Facebook does have a slightly older user base than Twitter and Pinterest which may be of relevance to you if your target audience is between 35 and 54 years of age, however Twitter and Pinterest may be a better fit if your audience is between 18 and 35 of age.

Of course gender is always a key consideration when weighing up social media statistics, and Pinterest is certainly a good option if you’re target audience is women. Boasting the highest female user base, especially if you’re looking to sell online, Pinterest has a strong higher education and high earnings base which is sure to prove valuable in an e-commerce scenario. On the other hand if you’re marketing to men, you may want to look at Twitter or Facebook as the social network of choice in 2013. Both Facebook and Twitter boast similar user base statistics and present an excellent opportunity if your target audience is middle class male workers with University qualifications, so check your selling point.

With the previous target audiences in mind, when it comes to igniting e-commerce spend online, Facebook is king, however recent statistics have shown there is growing value on Pinterest. A driving factor which defines this is the visual nature of both these social networks, and is something Twitter has not fully embraced thus far.

When it comes to time spent online in 2013 across social networks, it’s quite astounding to note that Pinterest users spend over an hour on average which is almost unheard of. When compared with Twitter’s 36 minutes and Facebook’s 12 minutes, this is unusually high, and presents an unparalleled opportunity for those looking to sell, especially in the home and entertainment industries. Although Pinterest’s time on site is very high, it should be noted that both Twitter and Facebook users’ time on site is excellent and not to be discounted.

In summary 2013 is shaping up to be a changing year in the online social media landscape. The Pinterest user base and relationship with online spend is likely to grow, Facebook is likely to roll out more products changing the landscape time and time again, and the Twitter user base is likely to grow, however Twitter needs to counter the issue of visual content quite quickly to compete in the e-commerce space. When considering where to spend your social dollars, be aware of your target audience, and wherever possible take the time to improve the visual nature of your content and you should begin to see some great results.

Source: http://www.jobstock.com/blog/social-media-statistics-2013/

While I was studying this evening I happen to run across this very valuable information in regard to Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. As we all know Facebook is a clear leader in terms of user base but equally relevant like the article states Facebook does have a slightly older user base however, Twitter and Pinterest may be a better fit if your audience is between 18 and 35 of age.

In the automotive industry we can't unfortunately just spend all of our energy on just one media site it's imperative that we have a strong presence on all the aforementioned sites. In some industries your target market may be a certain age however, in the automotive industry our target market is all age groups.

It's imperative for dealers not only to just place emphasis on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. But it's also important to have exposure with the other sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Craigslist and online classified ads just to name a few. Dealers are really dropping the ball when it comes to building brand awareness which will give a competitive advantage to the dealers that have a strong exposure on all these sites. It's like what Sean Bradley says when teaches about Googleopoly. Your dealership must dominate the first page of natural Google when consumers begin the research and buying process.

Last but not least some very intriguing information that I wasn't aware of was the amount of time that users spend on Pinterest versus Facebook and Twitter. Very compelling when you look at Pinterest users that spend over an hour online versus Facebook 12 minutes and Twitter users at 36 minutes.

What happens to all your social content when you die? Do you ever think about your private information falling into the wrong hands?

Perhaps this is why I never kept a journal online or offline, knowing someone might have the pleasure of finding dirt that is sacred to me. Today we have email, electronic calendars, and myriads of documents for work and play all filed away in Google Drive. Will anyone in the future have access to them, locked away behind our passwords?

Now I’m thinking what part of my after-life reputation I want protected from the public when I die. I don’t care about parting ways with my +1's. I’m thinking I should be able to leave someone the books, music and apps I purchased rather than fretting if my Gmail or drive folder is accessed by some fruit loop.

Lawyers, scholars and the government have been urging us to prepare to protect our post mortem reputation (our content). Write a social-media will, they plead, some sort of detailed plan for how your online life should be handled after you croak.

The will is a great idea except for one thing. What if you list all your social media information and passwords in the will and a month before you die you update a password and forget to revise your will? If the social media information in that account is not accessible by the appointed “trusted contacts” because of a wrong password, that information then becomes public information. If you’re like me, I have many passwords and will change them frequently, making it cumbersome to maintain a social media will.

Here’s a review from Google’s blog:

You’d think Google Death would make his wife's life easier by managing his digital accounts for her so she can focus on the other details of handling his death.

I’d be less concerned with my Facebook account living forever, and more concerned with the wrong person accessing my private email or Google drive information and plastering it all over the internet. Sure I’m dead and would care less about my reputation, however, my loved ones might not like what they find on the net from an adversary who only wants to damage my family’s reputation and cause harm.

Google has now rolled out a technological solution, a euphemistically titled "Inactive Account Manager" tool ("Control what happens to your account when you stop using Google," the company says, i.e. die). With this tool, you set the amount of time you want Google to wait before taking action (3, 6, 9 months, or a year). One month before that deadline, if Google hasn't heard from you, it will send you an alert by either email or text message. If that month closes out and you still have not re-entered your account, Google will notify your "trusted contacts" -- you can list up to 10 -- and share your data with them if you have so chosen. The email they would get would look something like this:

Alternatively, you can set up the manager to outright delete your account without sharing it at all. This includes all data associated with the account -- Blogger posts, uploaded YouTube videos, Picasa albums, Google Voice messages, etc.  (Note to self – this is for only your Google world content, not Facebook or other social hubs).

I always say, “if you don’t have plan B, you don’t have a plan.”  Google Death is a splendid plan B when it’s time to say Ta-Ta Toots. Now you can execute your plans without you once you're gone – in a graceful way, requiring few decisions on your part. So fill out that quick form and wait for the next service from Google.

I’ll really be impressed when Google finds a way to post from the grave.

This is part 4 of 4 in an ADM series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

---

Every strategy needs a goal or else it’s just an aimless plan. We’ve covered the need to set Facebook marketing goals and described both the safe approach as well as some of the more aggressive approaches to these goals. Now it’s time to bring it home (in hopefully less than 1000 words) with a couple more aggressive Facebook goals that you can set for your marketing.

As I said before, it’s extremely important to realize that playing it safe is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not that I want to encourage businesses to take that approach, but being aggressive means taking a bigger risk that the effort you put in will not yield the appropriate return on investment. I know that it can, but that’s no guaranty that it will even if you do everything right.

Thankfully, there’s always an abort button. If your aggressive techniques don’t seem to be paying off, you can always revert back to the safer goals.

Goal: Create a Communication Hub for Your Business

When you ask business owners about the risks of social media, most will latch on to the potential for negative press. I’ve even been told by a very prominent business owner that they don’t have a Facebook page because they don’t want people to have the ability to talk badly about them on Facebook. I was waiting for the punchline. There was none.

As you know, sticking your head in the sand is not the right approach, but sticking it way out there for others to attack is risky. It can, however, be extremely rewarding as companies like Domino’s Pizza have demonstrated. Are there risks of getting bitten by being extra communicative on social media? Sure. You have to know that going in if you want that to be your primary goal.

The benefits can be tremendous. When you turn Facebook into a communication hub that is active with feedback from former, current, and prospective customers, you have the ability to be eloquent, sincere, and transparent, three traits that most would see as admirable. It means that you stand behind your product and your company and you’re willing to accept the good with the bad.

The bad news is that if you’re doing it right, the bad will come. The good news is that the “bad” types of communication where customers and former customers complain can almost always be turned around into an opportunity to impress future customers. Bad reviews aren’t bad unless you let them be bad. By applying empathy, professionalism, and a true desire to improve your business, even the most scathing reviews and communications can be turned into a major win for your business.

Setting this type of goal requires constant attention. You have to set your smartphone to alert you the moment that anyone communicates with you because time is of the essence. It’s not just about not letting things linger without a response. Perhaps more importantly, it lets others see that you’re extremely attentive to your Facebook communication hub; this encourages them to want to talk to you through there as well. The more that people are talking to you on Facebook, the greater the opportunity to shine through the constraints of EdgeRank and let your messages be seen.

This is one of those situations where Facebook sponsored posts might happen well after the post goes live. Let’s say you ask a question like this:

“What should we serve at next Saturday’s big tent sale: hot dogs, hamburgers, barbeque, all of the above, something else? Let us know in the comments, please. We’re planning on making a decisions based on your input by this Wednesday.”

In that scenario, you’ll want to get the word out. It’s not just about giving people the choice on food. It’s about letting as many people as possible know about your sale. Once you have a couple of responses, now is the time to promote the post. Then again, if you’ve had success with previous promoted posts, it’s okay to launch the ads the moment you publish the post.

Be creative. Setting a goal of communication is fruitful when done right and embarrassing when done wrong. Do it right or don’t do it at all.

Goal: Drive Foot Traffic to Your Store

This is the big daddy of the goals, particularly for local businesses. It takes an abundance of creativity, a willingness to not give up when something doesn’t work, and the ability to make things happen in the real world as well as on social media.

If you’re an internet manager who has no access to setting specials or running promotions, this is a tough one to pull off. To bring real world traffic, you need real world incentives. If you haven’t the budget or authority to affect the real world aspect of your business, you should not go for this goal. It’s not that you can’t drive foot traffic with intangibles, but it’s infinitely easier when you have “the goods” in the form of reality rather than just virtual.

For example, the Dodge dealer that we used as the example in the previous post could set an event or create an offer that they run through the Facebook system for $14.99 oil changes available to Facebook fans only. They have to claim the offer or announce that they’ll attend the event and this can help you let your fans spread the word for you.

Another Dodge dealer example would be to set an event around a sale. Announcing the sale itself won’t do much, but giving something away such as free sunglasses can help you to get people to like your event on Facebook, again exposing the sale through their channels.

The hardest part about driving foot traffic through Facebook isn’t in getting the traffic. It’s in proving that the traffic came as a result of Facebook. When you’re working with budgets and you have to report to the boss, you’ll need to prove the effects. This is where events and offers come into play, but that’s not enough. You have to give the people who come to the store a reason to let someone know they came because of Facebook. Otherwise, they simply won’t tell you. If you can’t track it, then it didn’t really happen.

* * *

Regardless of which goal you set, remember that Facebook is a marathon of sprints. By that, I mean that it’s not always steady and constant but it’s also not something where you can expect to sustain the sprints of success over and over again. You have to know what you want and then set out to make it happen. Otherwise, you’ll be like everyone else who is flailing around on their Facebook pages trying to find reasons that they can use to demonstrate it’s working.

This is part 3 of 4 in an ADM series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

---

We’ve taken a look at the safe approach to setting Facebook goals. Now, it’s time to discuss letting the tiger out. Let’s sharpen our claws, stretch our muscles, and prepare for battle. Getting aggressive on Facebook is about going to social media war.

Keep in mind that the majority of businesses should stay with the safe goals rather than getting aggressive. They can be extremely effective for maintaining a viable Facebook presence without spending too much time on strategy, planning posts, and creating dialogues on Facebook. If you are going to set aggressive goals, your strategies are going to take time and money to make them happen.

It’s not for everyone but it might be for you. Here are some examples of aggressive Facebook goals.

Goal: Drive Traffic to the Website

This is one of the first things that come to mind when thinking of goals for Facebook. Most realize that it is known as a good traffic generation tool in general and they believe they’ll be able to do the same for their site.

Unfortunately, the standard practices used to drive traffic “in general” do not apply to most business websites. “In general”, Facebook is good at driving traffic to viral content. People do not go to Facebook to find links to inventory items. They go there to see pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base. They can get swayed into clicking on links with controversial titles or intriguing thumbnails, but again that’s not normally something associated with sites that are designed to generate leads or sales.

The only way to drive traffic to your website is by starting with strong content on the website itself. We’ve discussed using your website as your content hub and why it’s so important to have the type of content on your website for both social and search purposes that resonates with your overall target audience. Now, you’ll have to really apply these principles to make this Facebook goal achievable.

The starting point with a goal like this is to sculpt the appropriate fans. This cannot be stressed enough. If you have too few total fans or too many low-quality fans, you’ll want to fix that first before trying to drive traffic to you website. In many ways, driving traffic to your website from Facebook is about establishing trust within your community by posting only the absolute best content possible. Anything short of amazing simply won’t do.

Once you have that trust established by posting images and text that resonate and generate interactions, you can start posting quality content from your website directly to Facebook. If you’re a Dodge dealer, you could post a story like “The 5 Most Searched Dodge Chargers in History“. Assuming that your fans are strong, this will be the type of content that exceeds their expectations when they liked your page in the first place.

It’s supremely important to remember that this type of content must be promoted through Facebook ads. Even the most prolific Facebook pages by the most loved brands are not getting the type of traffic they could get from Facebook when they don’t advertise. Thankfully, if your fans are high-quality and you have a history of posting high value content on your pages, you won’t have to spend a ton to get a good amount of traffic. It’s not targeted traffic – visitors to the site may or may not be looking for a Dodge Charger at the time – so this strategy is best applied if you have retargeting campaigns working or if you’re using Facebook to help drive traffic for social signals purposes to help with SEO.

This is not, however, a way to generate a ton of leads or sales. We’ll discuss that goal shortly.

Goal: Dramatically Improve the Brand Footprint

Facebook may be a challenging venue through which to drive leads and sales via website traffic, but it’s the ultimate venue through which to improve your brand footprint. This goal is arguably the easiest to achieve of the aggressive goals but there’s a very time-consuming set of strategies behind it to make it truly successful.

With this goal, you’re trying to get your name and logo in front of as many prospect eyeballs as possible and as often as possible. To do this, you can employ a handful of different strategies. One strategy that you should never, ever employ is to take other people’s images and slap your logo on top of it. If you do this, you’re risking a brand disaster. I’m not going to dwell on the reasons behind it. I’ll just implore you to stop immediately if you’re doing it.

What you should be doing is taking pictures at your store. Every picture should be interesting and ever picture should include your logo as part of the image, not added after the fact. If you’re a Dodge dealer, you should be taking great pics of amazing Chrysler vehicles with your logo either in the background on a sign or on the license plate clearly visible.

That’s a very small strategy component if your goal is branding. The bigger and more time-consuming component is to go out into the Facebook world and start interacting where your potential customers are. That means getting chatty on the local newspaper Facebook page, offering help and support on local charity Facebook pages, talking about how great the BBQ is at Stan’s Restaurant around the corner, etc.

One thing to keep at the top of your mind when doing this – stay sincere and transparent. It isn’t just about getting your company name on the comment or share list. It’s about making an impact with your comments. It’s about helping others because you want to help others and not just to get your company name listed.

People are smart. They can tell when you’re not being sincere. This is why this goal is one of the most time-consuming. It requires a massive amount of genuine activity. It can’t be faked. You can’t skip a few days. If you go this route and your goal is to make your brand stand out ahead of the competition, you must be willing to commit.* * *I’ve been told to try to limit my 1000-word posts and I only made it through the first two aggressive goals before hitting the mark, so tomorrow I’ll discuss the next two aggressive goals: communication hub and foot traffic. Until then, think about what you really want to do with your Facebook page. Stay focused. Stay diligent. Facebook can be a wonderful marketing tool if used properly.

This is part 2 of 4 in an ADM series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

---

Setting goals on Facebook is extremely important. As I wrote last night, it’s the root cause of one of the biggest challenges businesses are facing in Facebook marketing: a lack of a proper strategy. If you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t be able to get there very easily.

There are two primary approaches to setting a Facebook strategy that I’ve put in the boring categories of “safe” and “aggressive”. Here, we’re going to go over some of the safe approaches to Facebook that businesses can employ if they want to be truly successful in their goal-oriented strategy. These aren’t my favorites; I’m an aggressive goal-setter. Still, they may be the best way for your business to operate on Facebook.

Goal: PR-Only

Social media has the potential to be an amazing communication tool when done right. It is the best way to have a two-way public relations presence. You can get your messages out and mold the perception of your company’s personality the way you see fit while having an open method through which people can reach you. PR should always be a portion of every Facebook strategy.

There is an option of using it strictly for public relations. This is the easiest way to go. It’s the least productive goal to set, but it’s by far the safest approach and easiest to implement. If your company either does not believe in the value of using Facebook to reach more customers or you don’t have the time to implement an aggressive strategy, the PR-only approach is ideal.

In essence, this goal is to use Facebook sparingly. You aren’t going for visibility. You’re using it for defense only. Growth in the local market isn’t important. You aren’t playing the EdgeRank game nor are you advertising on Facebook at all. With this approach, the only audience that concerns you come from two sources: your website and the search engines.

With the PR-only approach, you play it very safe. You can post sparingly – once or twice a week is plenty (no less than that, though) – and finding content is easy because it doesn’t have to be viral. It technically doesn’t even have to be interesting. It’s an expression of your company’s personality to a limited audience. You can post links to your blog, pictures from the office, industry news, congratulations to employees, customer testimonials, etc.

Because you’re not worried about exposure, you don’t have to worry about getting into your fans’ news feeds. Those who want to get a feel for your company will be able to find it in searches for your name on Google or Bing as well as by clicking on the link that you post on your website and blog. You’re painting a picture with no fears of hurting your affinity and limited worries about getting negative feedback on your posts. Very few people will see it, but those who do have the opportunity to get a good feeling about your company because you’re not taking risks.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, you will not be reaching people with this strategy. You will have a presence for those who want to find you, but there will be no growth, no additional leads or sales, no engagement, and you won’t be popping up in news feeds. The PR-only approach is a way to hide from all of the potential negatives in social media while still maintaining a presence that isn’t embarrassing. It’s as safe as it gets.

Goal: Basic Presence

This is similar to the PR-only approach, but there’s a chance that it can expose the brand to some additional people. Not many. You won’t be saying a lot but you will be interesting enough to get a little love.

If your goal is to have a basic presence, there are several strategies that can work. One of the easiest is to go with the daily industry picture. This strategy is extremely easy and maintains your presence without much effort. You simply schedule an image that’s relevant to your industry once a day, every day. That’s it. A Jeep dealer would post an image of a Jeep once a day. You can’t mess it up.

This goal is not one that will allow for much growth, but the chances of it ever hurting you are limited. Much like the PR-only approach, having a basic presence is designed mostly for those who find you on search or get directed to the Facebook page from you website. Because it’s likely going to be images that are of interest to your visitors, there’s a chance they might like some of them and get you an EdgeRank boost that can push your posts into news feeds.

This is the most common goal for local businesses today. Ironically, it’s the one that many wrongly classify as aggressive since they’re stepping outside of the bounds of pure business needs and trying to entertain their audience. The reason that this classification is wrong is because it’s still much safer than posting messages. Being fun isn’t necessarily aggressive. It can be, but we’ll discuss that type of goal in the next post.

Goal: Be the Industry Resource

Of all the safe goals, this is the one that requires the most effort. You’re trying to share your knowledge within your industry to your fans. Using the Jeep dealer example, they would be posting tips to maintain a 4WD when it’s not used very often, for example.

This goal can be ramped up more than other safe goals because you’re trying to bring value to the table. Facebook ads can work and this goal can help with branding and public perception if you stay consistent with it. In fact, you can get very active and appreciative fans as the industry resource. There’s a chance that you can build some decent EdgeRank and get shared amongst your target audience.

It takes work. Those who are conservative with their goals but want to be aggressive with the implementation of the strategy will be constantly researching to find more resources to either create or share from other sources. It’s an excellent approach if you have a matching blog with tips and best practices.

Those setting this as their goal do not have to post every day. In fact, once or twice a week can work just as it can with the PR-only approach, but never let your page go dormant for longer than a week. If you have to repost something with a slightly different spin in the description, that’s better than missing a week of posts.

* * *

There are other safe goals out there, but for local businesses if you want to play defense and maintain a presence without spending too much effort keeping it up, these are the best ways that we’ve found to work. The social media game is all about ROI, so if your investment is low, the expected returns can be low as well. When playing it safe, you don’t have to be loved or even liked that much. You just have to be present.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over the aggressive goals that are (to me) much more fun but that also encompass more risk. Playing with Facebook from an aggressive posture takes time and effort and there’s a risk that the returns won’t justify the expenditures. However, there’s also a tremendous opportunity to move the needle.

This is part 1 of 4 in an ADM series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

---

About a month ago I was asked when speaking before a group about what I thought the biggest mistake was that businesses were making on Facebook. I replied, “lack of coherent strategy” and went on about how too many business pages seemed like they were posting for the sake of posting, that they didn’t appear to moving in any particular direction, and that they were managing their social media presence on a day to day basis. If I could take back the answer (or better yet, elaborate further), I would.

I was wrong.

The actual biggest mistake that businesses are making starts a step before the strategy phase and would, in most cases, cure the ills that businesses are suffering with their strategy (or lack thereof). It really comes down to goals and the fact that most businesses are not defining their goals from the beginning nor are they adjusting them as their Facebook presence expands. THIS is the actual biggest mistake that they’re making. To those who heard me speak last month about this, I’m sorry to not give the most appropriate answer.

Every Facebook page should have a goal or set of goals that they want to achieve. Many will give the quick answer and say that their goal is to reach as many prospective customers and clients as possible, but this isn’t a real goal. Even in reach, it’s important to establish why you want to reach them and what messages you want them to receive. Are you wanting to reach them with your sales and marketing messages? Are you wanting them to see your logo and expand your branding? Are you wanting them to see that you’re involved in the various local and industry-specific conversations that happen on social media?

Keep in mind – “all of the above” is not a valid answer. That doesn’t mean that you cannot have a robust and diverse presence on Facebook that tackles multiple opportunities, but from a strategy perspective you’re message will get lost if you aren’t reinforcing it regularly. On average, only 16% of your fans are seeing your message at all and that’s if you’re doing a pretty good job at keeping your EdgeRank strong. While diversifying your message is important, keeping focused on a singular strategy should overrule the desire to be eclectic.

Over the next couple of days I will be diving into a wider range of specific strategies that you can employ. In the meantime, do you have any strategies that you’ve considered? Is there a technique that you’ve found to be effective or one that you think would work? I’m classifying the various strategy types into two categories: safe and aggressive. As with setting goals, determining strategies should be focused. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. You’ll end up spitting it all out on the table and embarrassing yourself.

Those who have been in internet marketing for a while realize that search engines are constantly changing. It’s part of the game of staying ahead of the competition to understand these changes and move with them appropriately. Despite this constant state, it’s nothing compared to the changes that happen on Facebook. From a business perspective, the only real winning strategy is to constantly be adjusting the practices, processes, and procedures used to find success.

On Facebook, even the goals are often changed. Unlike search where the goal is almost entirely about driving relevant traffic to a website, social media in general and Facebook in particular often see shifts in the goals for each individual strategy and the overarching strategy as a whole. Between traffic, branding, communications, and messaging, the major components of Facebook marketing remain the same on the surface but digging a little deeper reveals a need to shift with not only the changes that are constantly happening on the platform itself but also those that are happening within the community and the sentiment of the social media world.

One of our biggest focuses on Facebook is helping local car dealers make the most of Facebook. Just in the last month we’ve made adjustments to style, form, and techniques that are in response to the changes. This is an absolute must – a static Facebook strategy is not effective. What worked yesterday may not work today but may work again tomorrow. That’s the nature of the beast.

The most important thing to remember on Facebook is that there are two things to constantly monitor: changes in strategies that are posted on the various blogs (be careful here – more below) and changes in the results of the various campaigns that you run. It’s not just about watching likes and comments. It’s about watching reach (the truly important number in Facebook analytics) and following the sentiment through in a way that can guide future posts.

We must test. We must see what’s working today and make sure it’s still working tomorrow. We have to watch for fatigue; it’s easy to post great images of Mustangs on a Ford dealer’s Facebook page but eventually even the mighty stallion can get old and turn off fans.

We also need a willingness to try new things. Events, Offers, Questions – these can be effective depending on what you’re willing to offer for your business. Landing pages, video styles, advertising styles – all of these play important roles as well.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide nor is it meant to be a scare tactic. Facebook is not hard and it doesn’t have to be that time consuming, either. It does require attention and a system through which the changes and efforts can be tracked for true ROI.

Now, about those blog posts on strategies – take note but be skeptical. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what to do on social media to be successful and these opinions are often contradictory. There are very few overall strategies that have ever made me think, “Wow, that’s the one!” There are plenty of blog posts that make me think, “Hmmm, let’s give that a try and monitor the results.”

That’s the key. Take advice but don’t set anything in stone until you test it thoroughly yourself. Facebook can be fickle, especially when the organic algorithm itself can punish pages for making the wrong moves, but you shouldn’t be too fearful of making a mistake or taking a step backwards. The benefits of a strong campaign or strategy greatly outweigh the potential negatives associated with mistakes, so by fearless but monitor and adjust accordingly. Anything short of regular monitoring and a willingness to change can result in the wrong results.

Facebook purists will pan this post. They will say that the best way to post to Facebook is to post whatever you’re doing or thinking right now, that “planning” posts is not only insincere but that it undermines the point of Facebook altogether. Their points are valid and noted. Now, let’s talk about reality.

Busy people who have their own social media and potentially the social media profiles of sites and companies with which they work need tools. It’s true that the best way to post to Facebook is through the native interfaces – Facebook.com itself and their mobile app. However, there are drawbacks. You can schedule posts that go on pages through Facebook.com, but you can’t schedule for profiles. Perhaps more importantly, Facebook has an on again, off again glitch with scheduled posts that often “batches” them into an unintended album for any posts that are not at least 24 hours apart. This holds true for mobile image uploads as well. The problem there is that these batched albums cannot be liked, shared, or commented on in the news feed. If they can’t be interacted with in the news feed, they don’t really exist. Nobody clicks through to interact with them.

These are some of the tools that I’ve used in the past or that I’ve seen others use that have shown to be effective. To be effective, they have to be easy to use, formatted properly, displayed well in the news feed, and “play well” with EdgeRank. Keep in mind, EdgeRank can be adjusted based upon interaction. For example, if your posts from a certain tool tend to get more likes than posts with other tools, those future posts from that tool will appear higher in the news feed. The opposite is true as well. If posts from a certain tool are not as effective, they’ll fall further in the feed and become less visible as a result.

At the end of the day it comes down to personal preference. Which tools work for you? These work for me and people that I know, but that doesn’t mean they’ll demonstrate the same benefits for your posts. Go with what works. This is only a guide of a handful of suggestions.

Post Planner

This tool is invaluable to me. It allows me to manage my profile as well as my pages from within the Facebook environment because it’s an actual Facebook app. I pay for it and it’s worth every penny. I am able to control branding and links through it – everything I post has a link to my “app” which is a redirect to my blog. My only complaint is that it only works in 5-minute intervals. It would be nice to post at any time but I understand the constraints of the Facebook environment. Given what they had to work with, the end result was amazing.

Buffer

This isn’t just great for Facebook. It works nicely (maybe even better) for Twitter. I often cross post an image to both networks and this is the only tool I’ve found that handles that properly, showing in both networks as an uploaded image rather than a link. You can find the times that work best for you and set it up to post at different times on different days if you choose. It works chronologically so there’s no need to input times. You add something to the feed and it drops into the next available slot. Moving posts up or down is also relatively easy and there’s even a shuffle option if you’re scheduling a lot ahead of time.

IFTTT

The social media “recipe builder” is nothing short of brilliant. “If this, then that” allows you to connect your social profiles in ways that are changing the lives of users. It makes it simple to integrate so many different types of content that if I had to pick a favorite based upon pure ingenuity, this would be the hands down winner. For example, you can have a recipe that says if you post to Buzzfeed, the post will appear on Facebook as well and here’s how you want it to look. Takes a little while to master but once you get it, nothing will be the same.

Instagram

If you weren’t one of those who abandoned the service once they went rogue with their terms of service, you’ll be happy to know it’s still a very nice way to put interesting personal posts on Facebook. In fact, it’s my app of choice when posting images that I’m taking from my smartphone. Nothing fixes the low quality of smartphone images like a hipster-friendly filter. Don’t overpost – the app has a tendency to batch and appears lower in the news feed as a result.

Pinterest

Use sparingly. Pinterest has an interesting way of getting batched. If there have been two pins posted to Facebook recently, they show up side by side or one on top of the other with unique interaction buttons. It’s a nice way to mix it up, but it doesn’t appear as well on the news feed. Still worth the occasional post.

What NOT to use to post to Facebook

As with any good list of tips, there needs to be some advice about things to avoid. These are some of the tools that do not work as well on Facebook and should be avoided if the goal is exposure.

1. Tumblr – For whatever reason, whether it’s just the threat of another addictive social network or a challenge in the coding, Tumblr posts that go on Facebook do not perform well.
2. Foursquare – The app plays okay with the news feed, but people simply don’t like it as much. Even when images are included, people are less likely to interact with the excellent stalker app as they are when Facebook places integration is used.
3. Twitter – I’m likely in the minority on this one, but I’m not a fan of any interaction between the two services. I don’t like Tweets that come through on Facebook and I don’t like when Facebook status updates come through as Tweets. Call me what you will but neither path seems to work as well as posting independently of each other, even if it’s the same content being posted.
4. Hootsuite – I really like Hootsuite for Twitter and as an overall social media management tool. The Google+ integration and automation has been a lifesaver with all of the G+ pages that I manage. As a posting tool to Facebook itself, I had to stop using it a month ago. It just didn’t do as well in the news feed as the other tools available.
5. Flickr – Just like with Tumblr, Flickr doesn’t do very well. It could be because Facebook spent a billion dollars on a direct competitor with Instagram. That might just be my imagination. However, I love using IFTTT to post from Facebook to Flickr, so not all is lost.

In many ways, the standard thinking about your marketing no longer applies when it comes to what’s happening online. Two of the largest components, search and social, are in a constant state of flux. For better or for worse, the big players like Google and Facebook do what they can to keep marketers and the businesses using them on their toes.

Chalk it up to constant improvement if you’d like. Say that they’re out to get us and that they don’t want us to succeed because then they won’t be making as much money. Whatever theory works best to make you understand that stagnant strategies are ineffective, so be it. That’s not to say that there aren’t components of search engine optimization and social media marketing that haven’t worked for a long time and will likely continue to work into the future, but the overall status of SEO and SMM are always on the move. What worked yesterday may not work today but may work again tomorrow.

This stems from a conversation I had with a potential client who was convinced that the Google Penguin and Panda updates had reached their final form. There were no more changes to monitor, no more adjustments to make. His site was ranking well and there was no need to push any further. There are two problems with this philosophy. First, Panda was updated just last month for the umpteenth time since it rolled out in February, 2011. At almost two-years old, it’s still being adjusted. Penguin is far from hitting its final variation – Google has all but said that. Then, there’s the dreaded Zebra update that may or may not be a mythical unicorn more than a real obstacle, but whether it’s real or not doesn’t really matter. The point is that Google is always improving, which means that search marketers must always be improving as well.

The second fallacy with his argument is that their rankings were thought to be as good as they were going to get. We have a client who has been getting optimized since 2003. Every month we’re fighting to keep the progress that we’ve accumulated over the years while pushing them further in other keywords. While there is definitely a plateau that can be reached where the gains from improved SEO start to level off, the idea that SEO can be in a pinnacle phase with no need for further improvements in the future is preposterous.

Social media is worse. In social, it isn’t just the changes that the websites themselves make that make strategy adjustments important. It’s the trends and flow of the communities themselves that make a difference. Case in point – I was working with a client not too long ago who was feeding multiple RSS feeds onto their Facebook page and into their Twitter stream. There was a time (short as it may have been) when this strategy of “more is better” worked. That was 2010. Today, any business who is auto-feeding a dozen posts onto their Facebook page per day is reaching nobody. Once I showed them how to look at their statistics, they realized that out of 17K fans, their posts were reaching an average of 16 people. Everyone had either shut down their stream from their news feed or had seen so many without liking any that Facebook shut it down for them.

Their Twitter account was a mess. With 4k Twitter followers, nobody had engaged with the account in weeks. Their posts were all doubled up – they were posting from the same feeds onto Twitter and Facebook, then feeding their Facebook onto Twitter.

This isn’t intended to single out a couple of juicy examples. Most businesses are not taking such a careless approach to their online marketing. However, it does seem that there is a rise in complacency. When success is found, it’s time to move on – at least that seems to be a prevailing attitude.

The reality is this: success is relative and there are very few who have reached a level that cannot be dramatically improved upon with better understanding of the current trends. Instagram was a huge portion of many business’s Facebook and Twitter strategies just a few weeks ago and now is being abandoned altogether by many. Pinterest is hot today but is facing spamming threats that could plummet the site into strategic unworthiness. Google+ is effective today for search rankings and may become more effective in the coming months, but it could also fall off the radar completely if Google decides that it’s just too easy to manipulate.

Nobody knows what’s happening behind closed doors at the companies that drive our industry. We can speculate. We can guess. We can keep our eyes open, read the various blogs, talk to insiders we have in out back pockets, but at the end of the day we’re all dealing with too many unknown variables to rest on what works today.

I’m not trying to scare anyone. I just want it to be understood that your online marketing efforts should be tweaked, adjusted, monitored, and tested on a regular basis. To sit back and let the changes happen without you, to be passive in an extremely aggressive atmosphere, would be the biggest mistake you can make, particularly if you’re already doing well. I’ve said in the past, “Being thankful for what you have doesn’t mean you have to be satisfied with it.”

Perhaps a more appropriate “person” to quote would be Ricky Bobby: “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

It’s on thing to have people like your business. It’s another thing to have them “like” your business, as in on Facebook. Your customers may like you, but there’s a good chance that they won’t like you on Facebook. There are two primary reasons for this: (1) some people simply don’t like very many brands at all on Facebook, and/or (2) the first impression they had when they came to your page wasn’t impressive.

There’s something extremely important to keep in mind when trying to understand how Facebook for business works. According to numerous studies, people never return to your page after they’ve liked it. They got to your page from your website, as a recommendation based upon a piece of content that one of their friends liked or shared, or through Facebook advertising. Once they land on your Facebook page, they will decide extremely quickly whether or not to like your page. If they decide against it, the chances of them ever seeing anything that you post in the future will be dramatically diminished other than possibly through Facebook advertising (though that’s not even guaranteed).

Getting people to visit your Facebook is an art unto itself that requires a future blog post, but once you get them there you can do certain things that can help you to get more likes as a result. Keep in mind that it’s not about being likeable. It’s about being Facebook “Like-Worthy”. People are dishing out likes to businesses much less frequently than before. They are more selective now. Get selected! Be like-worthy.

Cover and Profile Pic

In Facebook’s ideal world, your business cover photo would be just that – a photo. They discourage the use of words or messages in the cover photo. I totally understand and somewhat agree with the philosophy, but I also understand the importance of the cover photo in establishing an appropriate first impression.

The profile pic is a challenging concept as well. Not all logos fit nicely into a square. By now, most businesses should have learned that they need a square variation of their logo even if only to put on social media profiles, but not everyone has. If you haven’t, make one… now. Your logo or other branding image should be easily discernible as a square. There’s no other way around it. Make it look like it’s supposed to be there, not like something that was poorly shrunk to fit into the space. It’s subtle but important.

Now, back to the cover photo. It should be enticing. It should be visually stunning. It may or may not need to have a message. Whatever you use as a cover photo, it should be something that appeals to your target audience. Don’t forget the placement of your profile picture. The best types of cover photos actually play off of the profile picture, even if only based on placement. In the cover image example above, the message is clear, targeted, and positioned just above the logo. The image itself is something that can be appealing to the target audience – a professional who appears victorious.

Like Other Pages’ Posts as Your Page

It’s the activity on Facebook that is done so infrequently but that can be a true differentiator between your Facebook marketing and the marketing of the competitor. When you “use Facebook as” your page, you can then go to the Facebook news feed and see posts of the other pages that your page has liked.

Liking, sharing, and commenting on what others post while logged in as your business page is an easy way to branch out and get the attention of your target audience. Your page should be liking pages that are relevant to yours. Local publications, industry companies and vendors, personalities that share your interests – like them as your page.

Once you do, the fans of those pages will see your support, your name, and understand that you are active on Facebook. Instant like-worthiness, especially if it’s something like a local charity that your company is supporting.

Pin the Best Content to the Top

Anything that isn’t time sensitive, that was popular with likes, comments, and shares, and that represents what people will see regularly or semi-regularly on your page should be pinned to the top. It cannot be too old – no more than a couple of weeks at most – because some people may not notice that it’s pinned and think that your page is inactive or posts very rarely. Most will scroll down and see the more recent posts, but you don’t want to risk missing anyone.

When you pin something to the top, that content is the first thing that visitors to your page will see once they scroll below your cover photo. Make absolutely certain that it is representative of what you will be bringing to the table if they like your page. It’s important to get more fans, but it’s more important to get the right fans. That picture of a cat you posted yesterday might have outperformed everything else you’ve posted this week, but if that’s not what you’re going to be serving up regularly, don’t pin it.

* * *

Facebook isn’t hard, but you have to understand some of the things that can separate you from the competitors. This is one of those topics about which I strongly encourage asking any questions if you have them. It’s that important.

The vast majority of business websites out there tend to stay laser-focused on their goals. Whether they’re intended to sell a product or generate leads, it seems that all of the content placed on their websites works towards this end. While there’s something that can be said about the strategy, changes at Google, Bing, and social media sites makes it beneficial to post content that does nothing more than educate, entertain, or act as a resource for people without attempting to sell or generate a lead.

If you want to truly get ahead of your competitors this year, you should be willing to devote a little bit of time (or money if you choose to buy it) every month on content. This isn’t the type of content designed to get ranked in the search engines, but it can help your important pages get ranked. It’s not the kind of content that will generate leads through social media, though you have opportunities every time someone lands on your site. It’s the type of content that is truly giving – you’re motives should be business-oriented but the content should be able to stand alone.

First, let’s take a quick look at why this helps. We’ve covered it before but here’s a refresher:

Valuable Content Helps the Rest of Your Site

Google, Bing, and the social media sites love quality content. They can tell the difference between quality content that is beneficial to visitors and content that is designed specifically to generate leads and/or sales. They can tell by the content itself in many cases (particularly in the case of Google) but they can also tell through inbound links that are earned and social signals that are given.

When you have content that people are willing to share, whether by linking to it from their websites and blogs or by sharing it on social media, the search engines and social media sites (Facebook and Google+ in particular) give additional trust to the domain. This is the primary reason that we strongly encourage having a blog on the primary domain itself. That’s not to say that there are no benefits from having an offsite domain, but for this exercise the benefits yielded come from the domain’s interactions.

A post that is valuable to visitors can link to other pages within the domain, helping both the domain in general and specific pages rank better in Google. For Facebook and Google+, sharable content ads the trust factor. Most domains do not appear as well on social sites regardless of the content because they do not have an established history of trust. By posting content that people share, the social sites start to get “acquainted” with the domain. You can tell if your domain needs a trust boost by having someone post content from the site and then clicking it on Facebook. If a warning comes up that “you are about to leave Facebook and go to blah blah blah”, then your domain is not trusted yet. You can fix this. You just need more people sharing the content on your domain. This can be achieved by posting quality content that people are naturally willing to share.

This type of useful content helps both in search and social. Now, let’s look at the content types.

Content Worth Sharing

There are several different kinds of content that can play well for the search engines when it comes to building two of the primary SEO signals: inbound links and social shares. The general way of looking at it is to take your industry, your area, or both and apply your knowledge into the creation of content worth sharing. Here are three examples:

• Entertain – Let’s say you have a Ford dealership. You can post a gallery of images of classic Mustangs, title it something like, “7 Epic Mustangs from the 60s and 70s”, and write up a 3-5 paragraph blurb about the storied history of the car. Many people love classic cars (and Mustangs in particular) and will be willing to share the page and the images on their social profiles as well as their blog or websites.
• Educate – With what you know about your industry and location, you should be able to teach people things they didn’t know. Even if you don’t know for sure, the internet is there to help. For example, you could post something like, “The Storied History of the Seattle Space Needle in Pictures”. Gather up some images of the Space Needle from when it was built and during times of note, write up a quick paragraph or even a sentence describing each scene (make sure it’s unique – don’t copy and paste!), and post something that will be educational on your site today and into the future. This has excellent sharing potential from locals.
• Resource – You’re the expert. Show it. There may not be a direct business reason to post a story titled, “How to SYNC Any Device in a Ford Fusion“, but the information can be helpful to those who run into challenges. They may share it. They may link to it. If they visit the page, they will likely stay on it for a while as they apply the advice. This component of the search algorithm isn’t discussed often but when a page is sticky, the domain gains trust in search.

These are very basic overviews of the ideas, but the key is to stay consistent. Some have asked me in the past why I keep it limited to two pieces of content. I don’t. If you can post every day, go for it! Twice a month is something that’s sustainable. In the business world, we often find ourselves starting a new project and abandoning it if it becomes too hard. Twice a month is enough to build up a nice library of content that can benefit your marketing immediately as well as over time.

The key is to stick to it. Schedule it. Make it happen. You’ll soon find you’re looking at your competitors in your rear-view mirror.

Social media icons and signs that say “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” aren’t nearly as common in brick and mortar stores today as they were a couple of years ago. Many companies who tried to make it work (or are still trying) found that the presence of signs didn’t do much to improve their following.

Today, it can be different. Many people use their mobile devices to stay active on social media, much more than they did a couple of years ago, but even with this the old school follow/like signs still won’t work. They can, but not if you don’t give them a reason. Thankfully, this is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to increase your following. To do it, you have to make it worth their while.

One car dealership I’ve worked with has found strong success by using the concept in their service department. They’ve gone so far as to give three reasons for people to follow them on Facebook (they aren’t as hip on Twitter yet but I’m trying to get them interested). There’s a sign at the pay counter that says, “Get a 5% discount just for liking our Facebook page.”

In the “small print” under the offer, they write, “We post 4 or 5 times a week and we won’t annoy you with bad jokes or links to our blog. Instead, we post Facebook-only service specials and only the best of the best cars for sale from time to time.”

It works like a charm. Their numbers are constantly rising. Then, the take it a step further with the third incentive in even smaller print below the second line. “If you like us already and still want the 5% discount, just post that you’re here and that you ‘like getting my service done at [dealership name] because _______.”

Signage is the least used effective way to get fans, followers, engagement, and endorsements. These are people who are already doing business with you and if they like the way they’re treated, you should encourage them to let their friends know. It doesn’t have to be a discount. It does have to include a reason. I know one non-dealer that has stuffed animals, the small ones you see at the carnival, stacked on the wall with a sign that says, “Get your kid (or yourself) a stuffed elephant or moose by becoming our Facebook fan.”

Be creative. Be fun. Make a promise about how your social media profile brings value to your followers and then deliver on that promise by making your pages and profiles awesome.

People won’t like or follow you without a reason.

Facebook has been trying to crack down on text within images for some time. They made a big deal out of it when they first rolled out Timeline but it was still possible to get by without getting noticed. Today, it's a lot harder.

While I've never been able to fully make sense of the rule, it's their site so we have to play their game. The way the rule works is that text in an image cannot cover more than 20% of the total space or you won't be able to run ads on it. You might be able to run it for a little while but they eventually catch it.

They continue to push the letter of the law further. If you have too much text in your cover photo, all of your ads get rejected automatically. They've now started including thumbnail images from links in the rule. The post above was rejected for this reason. The sad part is that there were other images on the page that I would have preferred to use, but Facebook didn't register them as a thumbnail option.

Be aware of the rule if you're running sponsored posts on Facebook. This isn't the type of rule that you'd ever want to try to break. Even with a direct line to a high level Facebook employee, it still took a couple of days to get a client unblocked who had been breaking the rule before we took over the account. I couldn't image how it is for those who have to try to plea with them if they didn't have a connection.

It might not make much sense, but again I'll stress - their site, their rules.

In one sentence, the advice that business owners and marketers need to hear is this: “Everything on your Facebook page should be centered around the real world.”

No, I don’t mean the reality TV show that launched it all in 1992. When The Real World launched on MTV 27 seasons ago (yes, it’s still going strong in case you weren’t aware), it set in motion a genre of television that many people claim to hate but that still gets millions of viewers every day. Today, the day to day version of “the real world of marketing on Facebook” should take one concept from the original show intro: “…start getting real.”

There’s a reason why you won’t hear this from people in the social media industries. The gurus and specialists who rely on Facebook management services to make a living don’t want businesses to know that the most successful local business pages are run from the stores themselves. The ability to stay real, organic, and authentic through social media is arguably the most important component in a successful business presence. To gurus, it means that their services cannot be as good as the real thing happening at the physical locations. To businesses, it means that all of the tools are either at your fingertips or scattered across the physical world around you.

As someone whose company offers social media products, one might wonder why I would give this advice. It’s simple – what can be done and what does get done are two different things. I wouldn’t be honest if I said that services offer the best possible results when the reality is that a well-guided and properly-deployed strategy by employees at a local business can be more effective than anything remote. However, the combination of a lack of updated knowledge in this constantly-changing arena mixed with the lack of time of the employees at a local business mean that sometimes it’s best to settle for second best.

Thankfully, when done right, second best isn’t far off from being the best. There are more failures happening from homegrown campaigns and strategies than from agency-run strategies because of both of these points. It takes time. It takes research. These are things that are easier left to those who do it on a regular basis for most businesses. However, if a business has the time to stay on top of the campaigns as well as the changes happening in the platforms, trends, and attitudes in the real world, they can have the greatest level of success.