Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars

Mitch Meyerson

• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781599185583
• eBook ISBN: 9781613083024
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

Eager business owners gain access to the playbooks of 23 of today’s most respected and well-known online marketers, who reveal their most valuable online strategies and tactics for capturing new customers and influencing ongoing purchases from current ones. Each chapter is a coaching session designed to help business owners avoid the pitfalls and mistakes by the experts who have been there and done that. Readers learn how to develop a personal media brand, build a total online presence, and create a social media strategy that increases traffic. They also discover how to develop and use content that converts visitors into buyers and ultimately loyal customers, succeed with SEO, pay-per-click, and linking strategies that get websites ranked. Also included is information on leveraging social networking apps, including Facebook, online video, and Instagram, and avoiding the mistakes made by new online businesses.

SECTION


III

Leveraging Apps

CHAPTER 13

How to Create and Implement a Facebook Strategy that Converts

Andrea Vahl

ANDREA VAHL is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and was the community manager for the Social Media Examiner for over two years. She specializes in running Facebook ad campaigns for businesses all over the world and is the co-founder of Social Media Manager School. She regularly writes for Copyblogger, Social Media Examiner, iBlog magazine, and other sites around the web. She also uses her improvisational comedy skills to blog as a slightly cranky character, Grandma Mary, Social Media Edutainer on her site at www.AndreaVahl.com.

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In this Chapter, You’ll Discover

What is really working on Facebook to get fresh, targeted leads coming to your door

Setting up a strategy that works with your busy schedule

How to take advantage of tools like Facebook ads and contests and track your results

Monitoring key performance indicators that will ensure returns on your investment of time on Facebook

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Facebook is the largest social network on the web but many business owners and marketers still don’t know how to take advantage of all Facebook has to offer. To complicate matters, Facebook continually changes their layout and their news feed algorithm to make it a moving target for marketers. Just when you get comfortable with what is working, it shifts.

Facebook Marketing Demystified

Some people talk about metrics such as the perfect time to post, the perfect length of post, the perfect way to post a link. But none of that matters as much as posting content that your audience cares about. Yes, there are strategies that work better on Facebook in terms of getting more visibility, but when you focus on providing good content consistently your audience will make sure they go out of their way to find you.

There is no doubt that Facebook is increasingly becoming a “pay-to-play” platform with pages getting less exposure in the news feed than they have in the past. But that should not scare marketers away. We’ll touch on some of the ways you can take advantage of Facebook advertising a little later in this chapter.

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Think of Facebook more as a subscription model where you will need to invest some of your marketing budget each month but you can still take advantage of the organic reach that Facebook gives you.

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Some people worry that Facebook use is declining, but many recent studies, including one from Pew Research, show Facebook use is increasing. All types of businesses are using Facebook, including B2B and B2C. You need to be online, and Facebook is still where it’s at.

So where do you start? Or where do you restart if your efforts have stalled? I am a big fan of checklists and this checklist will help you make sure you have all your ducks in a row.

1. Optimize Your Facebook Page

Your cover photo is the first impression for your Facebook page. The cover photo also shows up in several ways on Facebook—if someone hovers over your page name in a post, in suggested pages, and in other places. If possible, have a tagline on the photo that states the main benefit of why someone should like your page. On Grandma Mary—Social Media Edutainer’s cover photo we have “Social Media is waaay more fun with Grandma Mary!” People know instantly why they might want to like this page.

The next thing you want to optimize is your About section. Add your critical keywords here because this is indexed in Google and you get the chance to tell people more about what you do. Link to special places on your website you want to highlight and maybe even add some testimonials from happy customers in this section.

2. Have a Content Strategy

The biggest way people are going to interact with your Facebook page is through your posts. So you need to know what you are posting and how often. We’ll talk more in a moment about what types of posts work best, but you will need to have a mixture of business news, tips, photos, links, and also humor. People are on Facebook to be social and have fun. If you have some humorous posts about your business niche, your posts will get comments, likes, and shares, which will then help your exposure on Facebook.

Having a content strategy also includes how often to post. Facebook posts do have a limited shelf-life of visibility and if you are only posting a couple times a week, you are in danger of dropping off your audience’s radar. I recommend posting at least twice a day during the week to increase your visibility. That may feel overwhelming to some people, but when you create a content calendar of posts for the week, that task becomes more manageable. For example, you could post a helpful tip Monday morning and then a shareable quote Monday afternoon; then industry news Tuesday morning and something humorous Tuesday afternoon. See—it’s not too hard when you get organized!

3. Interact with Others

One of the best ways to grow organically is to connect and comment on other complementary business pages. You can like another page as your page and t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section I: Strategy, Conversion, and Mindset
• Section II: Traffic
• Section III: Leveraging Apps
• Index