Facebook Marketing Archives

5 Ways to Use Facebook Graph Search

October 23, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Do you know about some of the interesting ways to use Facebook Graph Search?

The Facebook Graph Search feature was rolled out a little while ago, but has not had quite the impact Facebook was hoping for. The social search tool geared towards providing people with personalized search results and competing with search giants is very impressive, but seldom used. It is a shame, because there are some great ways to use Facebook Graph Search.

While there are a number of features to the tool, we decided to pick five interesting ways to use Facebook Graph Search and highlight how they can be leveraged by individuals and/or marketers.

Search by Keyword, Interest and More

This is nothing new when it comes to search. You can use Facebook Graph Search to look for keywords and find results like Interests, Pages, Communities and more. The difference, however, comes with the personalization based on your profile.

Facebook Graph Search is designed to provide users with the most relevant searches based on their personalities (or, at least, the personalities that have been created in their profile). This is an obvious feature, and nothing out of the ordinary. The helpful aspects come when users start to drill a little deeper.

Filter by Location

Sure, when I do a Google search, it is going to give me the best results based on the location I have set in my Google+ profile. But with Facebook Graph Search, you can specifically indicate where you want your results to target and these results will, once again, be filtered according to your Facebook personality.

Personalize Searches

So, while your results in Graph Search are already personalized for your profile, you can narrow them down even further. Let’s say you look up ‘Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles’ and you generate a list of results. You can then use the filter on the right-hand side to further narrow those results by anything from the type of results to whether or not you, a friend or a group of your friends has ever checked in there.

Multi-Filtered Search

You want to find as specific a result as possible? Then Graph Search has you covered. When you use Facebook Graph Search, you can be as specific as you like and expect the results to be there. 91% of people trust the recommendations of their friends. That said, sometimes it is easier to search for something online than to text or call that friend. Luckily, Facebook Graph Search is designed to work as a pseudo-referral network.

What does that mean? Well, for example, you can search, ‘Mexican Restaurants in Los Angeles, California my friends like’ and find a list of results. The idea behind this feature was to add value to the ‘Like’ a company received. It also discourages black hat techniques, where brands buy meaningless likes. Now, when someone likes your company, you stand a better chance of being found on Facebook.

Search Through History

Now your brand’s presence and activity is more important than ever. Go to Facebook and type ‘Photos of [YOUR BRAND]’ and see what pops up. Your content library is now directly searchable. You can also add those filters we talked about. Go ahead, try ‘Photos of [YOUR BRAND] [FROM/TAKEN IN/BEFORE/WITH/BY] [MONTH, YEAR/YEAR/LOCATION]’ and see the results. People can search for a whole lot with Graph Search, and that includes your activity, and their activity with your brand.

For brands, an active presence and a complete profile are now more crucial than ever on Facebook. Think of it like you would SEO. Without your page titles, meta descriptions, alt tags and other SEO must-haves, what would be the point? Would it even make a difference? The same is now true for Facebook. Graph Search is designed to increase the value of Facebook for consumers and brands. To take advantage of this value, you need to optimize your Facebook page the same way you would a website.

These are not the only features that exist with Facebook Graph Search. Users can do a lot more and the feature keeps evolving. While it has yet to make the impact Facebook was hoping for, it is still an impressive feature and one we can expect to see and hear a lot more of.

What is your favorite feature of Facebook Graph Search? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

The Best New Features on Facebook Insights

October 17, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are some great new features on Facebook Insights that should get marketers excited.

Facebook has done a lot in the past few months in order to ramp up their Insights feature. Remember the ‘People Talking About This’ feature on Facebook? No more! Some of the new features on Facebook Insights provide marketers with some real, actionable data, and we have outlined the highlights of these new features below.

Where are people coming from?

The old Facebook Insights gave you a very basic overview of where some of your most recent activity was coming from. Now, one of the great features on Facebook Insights lets you see exactly when people arrived at your Facebook page, and how they got there.

What is working with your content strategy?

Your content strategy is going to be among the most important features of your bigger social marketing strategy. That said, if you can’t measure how your content strategy is performing, it is going to be very hard to know what is working and what is not.

Among the best new features on Facebook Insights is the evaluation of your content by the system. See what types of content reach the largest audience, what drives engagement and even when your audience is online!

What time period are you measuring?

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the old Facebook Insights were very confusing! There was not much clarity with what you were able to measure, and you simply had to hope that you were looking at the right data when making an executive decision.

A great new feature is the ability to pick a timeframe in which you want to see your data. An easy-to-use slider lets you select the dates you want to monitor, and you can simply look at posts, reach and engagement in that period of time. This specificity is much needed to know how campaigns performed and what needs to be nixed or modified in the future.

There is a lot more to love when it comes to the new features on Facebook Insights, and every marketer is strongly encouraged to take a look at them. While Facebook might not be your primary network for traffic or business, a billion people can’t be wrong. Now, it is nice to know that there are Insights available to businesses to match the power that the network has on its surface.

What is/are your favorite feature/features with the new Facebook Insights? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How to Track ROI on Facebook in 3 Easy Steps

October 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Tracking ROI on Facebook and other networks is always among the top concerns for marketers. This is one great way to track ROI on Facebook.

Despite all of the methods that exist to measure ROI on Facebook – some more complicated than others – there are still marketers and executives that refuse to acknowledge that it can be done! One great way to measure ROI on Facebook is with Facebook’s easy-to-use Conversion Tracking. Below is a step-by-step set of instructions on how to create goals on the network and measure ROI on Facebook.

Step 1: Go To Your Ads Manager (or Power Editor)

This is about as simple as steps get. Get started by going to either your Ads Manager and clicking on “Manage Your Ads” (the green button on the right of the header image) or the Power Editor (depending on how familiar you are with Facebook advertising).

Step 2: Set Up a Conversion Tracking Pixel

The next thing you are going to need to do is create a conversion tracking pixel. This is a small piece of code that you are going to place on your conversion page (this could be a checkout page, a download page, form submission, etc.).

First, go to your Conversion tracking in your designated ads platform.

Then you are going to click on the green “Create Conversion Pixel” button on the right hand side where you will see this box pop up:

Fill it out with the name of your goal (in this case, we are creating a goal called “View Blog”) and what category that goal falls into. Above, we have selected Key Page Views (essentially, the conversion is made when a user views a specific page) but other categories include Checkouts, Registrations, Leads, Adds to Cart and Other Website Conversions.

Now once you click “Create Pixel” you are going to see a small snippet of code pop up. You do not need to know any complex degree of HTML to work with this. In the code, you’ll see a line that allows to add a value to this conversion (the line with the red arrow next to it below). It is here that you can denote how much this conversion is worth.

Say, for example, you are sending people to a contact form for more information, and you have determined based on some fancy accounting work that any lead that fills out the form is worth $5.00. So, you would change this line to read five dollars (the currency is in the line just below it) and save the code.

Step 3: Load the Pixel Onto Your Conversion Page

Now comes the part where you might need the help of your webmaster or code-savvy friend.

Copy the code you have generated and place it in the header of your conversion page (detailed in the instructions before the code, above). Now, when people have clicked on your ads and found themselves at your website, Facebook will register that they have taken action (a conversion) based on when they land on that page with the conversion pixel uploaded.

And there you have it. Three simple steps to help you measure direct ROI from Facebook.

What other ways do you measure ROI on Facebook? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Find out more about measuring your ROI on Facebook with our Consulting Services here.

Social Media Case Study: McDonald’s on Facebook

September 19, 2013/by Corey Padveen

A great example of practices to avoid in your Facebook strategy comes from McDonald’s on Facebook.

Have you ever visited McDonald’s on Facebook? The brand might look great by the numbers – nearly 30M likes, tons of check-ins, and plenty of engagement on their individual posts – but if you look closely, you’ll see that the brand is displaying some bad habits that smaller companies, without a household name, should probably avoid.

When it comes to McDonald’s on Facebook, there are certain things that the company can get away with based solely on the nature of the brand. Those golden arches are recognized the world over, and there is little the brand can do without getting a massive amount of attention for it – for better or worse.

There are three things that the brand does on Facebook, however, that might work for McDonald’s, but should be avoided at all costs by smaller brands without the commercial clout the fast food chain has to fall back on.

No Engagement

Despite the fact that every post shared by McDonald’s generates hundreds if not thousands of comments by fans of the brand, McDonald’s has virtually never responded to a single user.

Now when a post generates hundreds of responses in a matter of hours, it might be hard to respond to every one of them – that’s fair. But there is not so much as a ‘Thank You’ by the brand anywhere. Now pretend this was not McDonald’s. Let’s say it was a small, single-location restaurant with a loyal customer base. Would it not seem strange if people were sharing content and reaching out to the company and being completely ignored?

There should always be some form of Social Care in place – customer service on social media. Let your audience know that you are listening and being social, and not simply using the platform to promote your brands.

And that brings us to the second faux pas by the brand.

All About the Sale

Go through the posts shared by McDonald’s on Facebook, and you might be surprised to see that almost everything the company is sharing is promoting their products – and nothing else. With the exception of a few albums for some McDonald’s-sponsored events or Monopoly, everything McDonald’s shares has that sales pitch feeling to it.

Again, what would people say if a brand without the commercial clout that McDonald’s has started doing this? It probably wouldn’t go over so well.

No Thanks Given

Despite consistently high levels of engagement with their sales-based posts, there is nothing unique offered by McDonald’s on their Facebook page in order to reward loyal fans.

Take a look at what Cadbury did to thank their fans on Facebook, and you’ll see an excellent example of a brand showing customer appreciation. McDonald’s makes no effort to show gratitude, and one has to assume that if those golden arches were not behind it, would they find as much success on Facebook?

It might look good on the surface – hard to argue that close to 30 million fans is a bad thing – but in reality, McDonald’s exhibits several ‘Do Nots’ when it comes to Facebook. Smaller brands would be best to take the McDonald’s Facebook strategy as a list of practices to avoid.

What big brands do you think have done a great job on Facebook or other social channels? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: Standard Life

August 8, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Standard Life provides savings and insurance services and has been doing so for nearly 200 years – nothing so exciting to warrant a social media case study, right?

Social media is everywhere. Whether you are a major cutting-edge tech firm or a staple of the insurance business, social media has a place in your industry. Despite the long standing of Standard Life, Craig Johnston, in an interview with econsultancy, explained how and why the insurance giant decided to dive into the world of social media marketing.

Though the company took a crack (with some success) on Facebook and YouTube, they have found their true social media calling on Twitter and LinkedIn. Why? The marketing team took the time to develop a strategy, target influencers and reach out to very specific audience. The results have been outstanding.

Standard Life wanted to use Twitter as a means of providing additional resources and to engage with influential advisors. Well, after creating a functional content strategy and targeting the 30 users they deemed most influential to their target audience, they managed to garner nearly 67% of them as followers, and are now sharing content with them (and their clients, future prospects) on a regular basis.

On LinkedIn, Standard Life also wanted to reach out to influencers, so they created a private group for advisors and reached out to several they found to be most influential. By speaking to these individuals on a personal level, they managed to persuade many of them to join the group, which prompted several others to join (without an invite) as well.

There are quite a few great points that marketers can learn from this program.

Find Out What Works

This goes for both your industry and your brand. Facebook has a billion users so it must be the best network for you, right? Not necessarily! Maybe you will find that YouTube is where you generate the most referrals and social media success.

What is important is testing each market (with a clearly defined strategy, of course) in order to determine which one is going to work best for your business.

No One Is Bigger than Social Media

This is not saying that social media should replace your other marketing efforts. However, as we pointed out in an article about Social Media Marketing Myopia, thinking your brand is above the consumers’ preferences will leave you clamouring for business you once took for granted.

Insurance may not be the most exciting field, but there is still room for a social media presence. Johnston and his team realized this, and it is important that other marketers realize it as well.

True Value Rests with Brand Loyalists

The longevity of a company rests with its brand advocates. When word-of-mouth spreads far beyond product evangelists, you can feel safe in the future success of your brand. As Johnston notes, “The funnel has now changed so we are always trying to drive advocacy. Companies have to offer customers free stuff, such as information and advice, to add value and help encourage a purchase.”

Showcase your expertise and keep them coming back and wanting more.

What other examples can you think of where companies in relatively unsocial industries found room for social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Facebook Marketing: 8-Step Checklist to Getting Started

August 6, 2013/by Corey Padveen

When it comes to Facebook marketing, there are a few steps that need to be taken when getting started.

You have a company, you have a page and you are ready to get started with your Facebook marketing program – all great things!

But in order to find success with your Facebook marketing, there are a few things you need to do right at the outset.

Below is an 8-step marketing checklist for getting started on Facebook (in order).

1. Pick a Page Name (if possible, with a keyword)

If you are John Smith and you own a steakhouse, try and name your page ‘John Smith Steakhouse’. Keywords in the page name are among the few areas on Facebook where they can benefit SEO, so try and get it in there when you choose your name.

2. Create a Vanity URL

A long Facebook URL with a bunch of numbers at the end of it is not very nice to look at. Go to https://www.facebook.com/username and create a vanity URL for your page to maintain professionalism.

3. Optimize Your Sections for SEO

Your About section and your mission statement should have links and keywords close to the front in order to optimize your page for SEO. Do not leave any sections blank. It simply does not look good when people come by.

4. Add Photos and Videos

This includes your profile picture (Hint: 180X180px) your cover photo (Hint: 851X315px) and your page photos (Hint: They fit into 400X400px space on your Timeline). Get content up quickly so you do not have an empty company page.

5. Add Tabs to Your Page

A ‘Like’ box and a selection of photos is not impressive. People want to see that you pay attention to your Facebook page the same way you would pay attention to your customers. Add some custom tabs to your page and make it look great! (Note: Tabs should highlight your goals and expertise.)

6. Promote Your Page

It may sound silly, but people are generally a little hesitant to ‘Like’ a page that has no activity. Reach out to friends and existing clients and invite them to ‘Like’ your page in order to get the ball rolling. You might also want to create a promotion of some of your content for a few bucks to a targeted audience and build your audience that way as well.

7. Familiarize Yourself with Insights

Facebook recently updated their Insights, and there is a lot to learn. As a page owner, you should know what Insights are available, what they mean and how you can use them to increase the business you drive from your page.

8. Start Engaging!

Ask questions, share updates and encourage conversation on your page. Though the average engagement rate on pages falls somewhere in the 0.5%-1.5% range, you should be aiming to shatter that number with your page!

These 8 steps are crucial to getting started with Facebook marketing. However, once they have been taken, it is time to start watching business grow with the help of Facebook!

Which step do you think is the most important? Do you have any others? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: Red Bull

August 1, 2013/by Corey Padveen

The Red Bull social media program is among the most impressive in the world, and it has been responsible for much of the brand’s success both on and offline.

While there is much about the Red Bull social media program that can be dissected and observed, it makes sense to start with the most prominent network in their social media arsenal: Facebook.

39 million fans is nothing short of amazing. And while ‘Like’ counts may not mean much, the fact of the matter is that Red Bull has created a brand that resonates far beyond the ‘Gives You Wings’ persona it created at the beginning. Sports, physical triumph and even record-breaking feats are now associated, almost by instinct, with the brand, and much of that is to the credit of their Facebook presence.

There are few key components of the Red Bull Facebook strategy that marketers can learn from. While Red Bull might be a large, worldwide brand, these are lessons that can be applied to both the largest and smallest companies on Facebook.

Let Your Persona Do the Selling

Have a look at the Red Bull Facebook page and try to find a promotional post. In fact, you would even be hard-pressed to find a post that featured so much as a logo.

The persona created by the Red Bull social media team is one that associates greatness with the brand. Red Bull has found its voice and tone and the social network, and has run with it to become one of the most entertaining accounts out there.

Though they are not bombarding their fans with constant content, each piece maintains the brand’s Facebook personality traits and is treated fantastically well by their extremely loyal Facebook fan-base.

Create Clear Distinctions

Red Bull has become famous for some of their viral content. More than one record was broken when Felix Baumgartner jumped from the Stratos and back to Earth. The YouTube record for live-stream viewers was also shattered.

While the Red Bull Facebook page featured content from the jump, it was not the primary source for fans. Red Bull created a standalone page for this endeavour, and it garnered over 850K fans. The only focus of this campaign (page) was the event and all the circumstances that surrounded it.

In this way, fans could find all of the information they could ever want in one central place, and wouldn’t have to hope and rely on Red Bull to post content to their main Facebook fan page when something new popped up.

This is a tactic that should be applied whenever a brand develops a new campaign. Whether it is something as small as an event page on your Facebook brand page, or a whole new page for your major event, something branded and separate from your primary social channels should be created.

Engage!

Look through the posts on the Red Bull Facebook page. The brand engages with their fans virtually every time it is appropriate.

Conversations and engagement are the driving forces behind successful social media strategies, and Red Bull has proven that. By engaging in conversations, it keeps not only the fans engaged, but extended networks can see and even participate as well.

There is a lot marketers can learn from the Red Bull social media strategy; these are just a few takeaways from the Red Bull Facebook program.

Which one of these tips do you think is most important? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Ways to Boost SEO with Social Media

July 16, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What can you do to boost SEO with social media?

There is a lot of debate over whether or not social media factors into your search rankings. There are those who firmly believe that social media is the ‘next big thing’ in SEO, and those who feel as though the power of social media has been taken out of context as it pertains to SEO, and that is has not real benefits at all.

The fact of the matter is that social signals do have an impact on SEO, and that you can, through the use of a few key practices, boost SEO with social media.

Focus on Google Authorship

Whether it is through blogging, Google+ or YouTube, you should try, whenever possible, to increase the authority of your name on Google.

Google Authorship is an important social signal when Google ranks its results. Ever see a blog article pop up in Google with a little picture on the left? That’s a ranking factor that should be considered when writing. The more authority your name has on Google’s social layer, the more likely those articles are to pop up when someone searches for a specified keyword.

Share Links with Your Content

When it comes to social signals, link-sharing on social networks is very similar to link-building through anchor text. While keywords do not necessarily hold as much weight on social media, your links do. When someone shares a Facebook post linking back to your site, or retweets a link you shared, search engines tend to pick that up.

Don’t miss out on an opportunity to get noticed – share some links (when they are appropriate).

Consistency

Your presence needs to be felt on social media and your content needs to be ongoing. You should be partaking in conversations on a regular basis if you want to see your search rankings improve. This results from two things. First, your content will be shared more regularly on social networks. Second, the effect of your presence on social media means a greater potential for people to search for you outside of these networks.

Social media networks are a great way to get your name out there, so be there as often as you can.

Go To the Source

Google is the world’s largest search engine. Google+ is a social network owned by Google. Ergo, one can easily conclude that Google+ is important to search rankings in Google.

It’s a fact. In a recent infographic created by Searchmetrics that measures 2013 ranking factors on Google, Google +1s topped the charts. Sharing interesting and engaging content on Google+ is going to lead to +1s on your content. +1s mean more love from Google. Join Google+ Communities, join conversations and share relevant material and you can be sure to see your rankings improve.

Integrate Social Media and SEO

These are not two standalone factors that increase your business. Social media and SEO needs to be approached together. Granted, one strategy might have been in place before the other, but that does not mean that they cannot be integrated into one another.

Look at your keywords, where your traffic is coming from and where you are finding success on both social media and SEO, and create a single strategy where the two act as complements, not competitors.

These are just a few ways you can boost SEO with social media. How have you found social media has an impact on SEO? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: Intel

July 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How did Intel subtly promote their new processor to Facebook users?

Creating interactive campaigns has long been an excellent way of engaging your audience and driving users to a landing page, your website or a store. It also makes for a great, open and shut social media case study. However, launching a campaign targeted at Facebook users to build brand awareness is a little more difficult, but Intel managed to do it right.

In 2011, Intel was preparing to roll out their all-new i5 processor. Naturally, this was intended to be the next generation in computer hardware, and they wanted people to know about it. Knowing that showing was much better than telling, the marketing team at Intel decided to put together the ‘Intel Museum of Me‘.

If social media has taught us anything, it is that we are all, to a certain degree, self-obsessed. In order to keep their brand at the forefront of your mind, Intel leveraged that fact and gave you your own museum, something that, quite frankly, is hard to look through only once.

Now, not every marketing budget will allow for such a vastly intricate and impressive campaign to be put together. However, there are surely a few things that marketers can learn from the great work done by Intel to promote their brand to the Facebook audience.

Sometimes the Soft Sell Works Best

The Intel i5 logo pops up at the very end of your museum tour. It is hard to understand where Intel fits into all of this, but it all comes together right at the end. And it leaves you with enough chills to keep the brand in mind for a lot longer than the 3-minute video.

The soft sell can often be the most powerful. Relate your brand to your audience on a personal level and they will remember your name.

Connect with Your Audience

This does not mean connect with them on Facebook or Twitter (well, do that too) but rather really connect with your audience. Give your campaign that personal touch and make each member of your audience feel like it was designed exclusively for them. This small gesture will go a long way when it comes to keeping your brand on the forefront of their minds.

Go Beyond the Brand

Much like the first tip above, your campaign should sell the brand by adding value to your audience’s experience. While touting your expertise, the benefits of your product over another or some other value added from your product or service might work well when it comes to one-time sales, brand loyalty is invaluable and benefits your business in the long-run.

Explain how your brand adds value to your customers and showcase that value with your campaign. This will go a very, very long way.

If you have no yet experienced the ‘Intel Museum of Me‘ we really encourage you to have a look.

What other lessons do you think marketers can learn from this social media case study? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

6 Types of Content to Post on Facebook

July 2, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There is no shortage of content to post on Facebook, but what type of content is going to help build your business?

Recently, Wishpond published an infographic detailing Wal-Mart’s journey to 30 million Likes on Facebook. With 28 million of those coming from their targeted market in the US, they are the biggest Facebook brand in the United States. That’s quite an achievement.

So how did Wal-Mart get there? A lot of elements factored into their success, but when it comes to the types of content to post on Facebook, every brand can learn a thing or two from Wal-Mart.

Below are the six types of content observed by Wishpond that Wal-Mart shared on Facebook to bring their brand to the top.

Product-Specific

Roughly 45% of the content shared on the Wal-Mart Facebook page is product-specific. There is often talk of avoiding promotional content, but if you are not trying to showcase what you have to offer, then you are not really making an effort to drive business, are you?

Wal-Mart found a nice balance in sharing content about their products a little less than half of the time.

Fun and Entertaining

About a tenth of the content shared by Wal-Mart are fun internet memes with little or no correlation to their products or services. Simply sharing content people will enjoy seeing.

Engagement-Oriented

Roughly 13% of the content on Wal-Mart’s Facebook page encourages fan participation. Asking questions, opinions and other engaging types of content are important to keep your fans coming back and get your fan base growing.

This type of content is also a great way to get user feedback and find out what’s going well and where you should make some changes.

Informative and Useful

If you can provide helpful information that your users can actually put into practice, then you are providing a service that makes your page all the more valuable to your audience. For Wal-Mart, this type of content makes up roughly 15% of their posts.

Culturally Significant

Again, a tenth of the content shared by Wal-Mart relates to events and culture in their target market. By sharing content that is socially and culturally relevant to their target audience, they give their target audience all the more reason to become fans on Facebook.

Social Awareness

Lastly, another 10% of the content shared by Wal-Mart sheds light on events, organizations and causes that are culturally and socially significant to both the brand and the audience. People like to know that there is more to a brand than business. Show a lighter, more thoughtful side of your brand. Goodwill is just as important as anything else your company does.

Wal-Mart has found an excellent balance of content on their page. Take a look at it and you will understand why.

What type of content do you think is most important to be sharing on Facebook? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!