Facebook Tips & Tricks part 3

Facebook Ads Campaigns.

Facebook Ads provide two ways to advertise on pages of Facebook. You can create an ad campaign that links to a landing page within your Web site, or you can advertise something on Facebook, such as your new Business Page or an application you have developed. 

You can also employ a Social ad. This shows your image and text alongside the social action you take on Facebook pages. 

Facebook Ads are targeted, meaning you choose the location, gender, interests, relationship status and other demographics of your target audience. 

In creating a Facebook Ad campaign you will need to decide which type of ad you want to run and provide the link the ad will lead visitors to. The Ad title is restricted to 25 characters while the Ad text (body) must fit in 135 characters. If you choose to include a photo, it needs to be 110 by 80 pixels. 

Facebook Ads can be run on a Pay for Clicks (CPC) or Pay for Views (CPM) model. During the ad creation process, you set your daily ad budget and the maximum bid, which is the most you are willing to pay per click. CPC ads are displayed in Face book's Ad Space, Home Page (or both), while CPM ads are shown only in the Ad Space. Facebook selects the best ad to run based on the cost per click or impression and ad performance. 

Facebook Ad Campaign Demographic Page: Target your audience.

After creating the ads you want to run, Facebook will approve your ad for use and suggest a max bid if you have bid too low. Through your Ad Management Page, Facebook provides ad data so you can track your progress, change the audience, or adjust other metrics as the campaign progresses.  

Tips for Small Businesses

Facebook Ads were launched back in November 2007, but most online reports to date still indicate that targeted Facebook Ads are not as successful as using other campaigns – most notably, Google AdWords. If you are hesitant to burn up your ad budget on Facebook just yet, try creating and promoting your free business page first. 

 A small e-commerce site owner can also try Googling for "free Facebook Ad credits." These appear ever so often to entice advertisers to try Facebook Ads. You can take advantage of them to try it out before investing your own advertising budget. 

Facebook Tips & Tricks part 2

Facebook How-To Guide: Create Business Pages and Ad Campaigns

Social networking site Facebook is used by more than 150 million people to share personal information with friends online. The site celebrated its fifth-year anniversary yesterday and is continuing to attract members with demographics that could serve e-tailers well in terms of extending market reach and increasing branding. 

The Web research firm Hitwise reports that overall Facebook was the fifth-ranked Web site in terms of total market share of visits in January 2009. Furthermore, the time spent on Facebook by users has continued to increase and reached an average visit time of just over 21 minutes in January 2009. 

More good news: When compared to 2008, there has been a pronounced shift in the age of the Facebook audience. According to Hitwise, visitors aged 18 to 24 represented a 42 percent share of visits for the four weeks ending Jan. 26, 2008, but this number dropped to 24 percent for the four weeks ending Jan. 24, 2009. Now visitors aged 25 to 34 make up the largest share of visits with 27 percent, with 18 to 24 and 35 to 44 closely following with respective shares of 24 percent and 23 percent. 

Facebook is aware that e-commerce site owners may want to capitalize on Facebook traffic, so they allow members to create free Facebook Business pages or initiate pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Leveraging Facebook business options can provide a new channel for your customers to interact and at the same time help you acquire new customers as your Facebook fans spread the word about your business to their friends. 

In this Facebook how-to guide, we will show you how to use two of the business solutions offered by Facebook. First, we'll walk through the steps you need to take to create your own Facebook Business Page (also called a fan page) and then discuss the tasks involved in creating a Facebook Ad campaign, which can be used to send visitors to your Web site or new Facebook Business Page. 

 Getting Started: Get Your Business on Facebook 

To get started you will need to visit the Facebook Advertising page. Here you will find tabs to access the following business options:

• Advertising: Businesses use this tab to create adverts that will run on Facebook pages
• Pages: Businesses use Pages to create a presence on Facebook that will let others join your page as a fan
• Connect: Facebook connect lets users seamlessly connect their Facebook account and information to your site.
• Facebook Share: Design a button for your site to make joining your Facebook Page easy for your customers 

 How to Publish a Facebook Business Page

 The best way to start is with creating a Page for your business. Those who have created a personal Facebook profile will find the process pretty simple, but the step-by-step form pages will also make creating a Business Page painless for those new to Facebook.

You will need to have basic business information ready before creating the Page — decide on a page name and find any images you want to upload. Remember that your company logo is best for the profile picture. When you create the page you will need to include a description of your Web site, product, brand, or company. 

With this information handy, simply choose one of three categories for your Business: Local Business (and the industry), Brand or Product, or choose if this will be a Page for a public band, artist, or other public figure. Once you select a category, you are required to enter the business name. When you submit this information, you will then see a Business Page that shares some resemblance to personal profile pages on Facebook. 

In step two, you will want to upload your business logo, provide information about your business, contact information, hours of operation (if you have a retail or local office), and a general description that describes your business. As you add more details about your business you can view the changes live on the page you are creating. This is all you need to publish a basic Business Page on Facebook.

Customize Applications and Business Details

On your Facebook business page you will see applications that you can include on the page you have just created. When viewing your Business Page, there is an Edit Page link on the top right. Here you can customize all options from a single admin screen. 

In the previous step we took care of the profile picture, basic, and detailed information boxes. Now, you will need to customize the applications that you want to use. Each Application has a small edit option by the title, letting you remove any of the available applications or customize the application to your liking. 

Here are the basic Facebook Applications for Business pages: 

• Discussion Boards: Enable your fans to get their ideas out into the open. Discussion boards let you know exactly what your fans and customers think and want.
• Events: Organize gatherings or let people know about your upcoming business events.
• Information: Manage settings for the Information application.
• Notes: Share your business news, or engage your fans through written entries.
• Photos: Upload photos to your page and allow your fans to share photos on your page also.
• Reviews: Fans and customers can leave honest opinions about your business.
• Video: A high-quality video platform for pages on Facebook.
• Wall: The Wall is an open forum for your fans or friends to leave comments, thoughts, and ideas about you on your Page or Profile. 

Facebook Business Page Demographics.

The last option you will need to use is the Settings area. This is where you edit country restrictions, place age restrictions and change the published status of your business page. When you are happy with the way your Business page looks, you click the Publish this page link.

Tracking and Gathering Business Page Fans

Within 48 hours of publishing your page, you will be able to access 'Insights,' which is Facebook-collected data about how your business page is being used. 

Here you can track page views, number of fans, removed fans, wall posts, discussion topics, reviews, photo views and more.

After you have successfully created a Business Page, you can link to it from your own Web site, e-mail campaigns, or encourage your own personal Facebook friends to become a fan of your page. 

Remember, when a personal friend becomes a new fan, that message is displayed as a notification to all of your friend's friends. Similar to word-of-mouth marketing, this is a great way to bring Facebook users to your new Business page. 

Another option to leverage Facebook traffic is targeted Facebook Ads, which you can use to send Facebook users to your own Web site or to your newly created Facebook Business Page.

 

 

Facebook Tips & Tricks part 1

Three Ways to Customize Your Business Facebook Page Static FBML, SocialRSS, Facebook Events, and More

One of the challenges in having a Facebook Page — the name that Facebook uses to identify a business profile — is being able to make it look less like Facebook and incorporate more of your own brand identity on the Page. There are a number of Facebook applications (apps for short) that you can customize to display your own business content, links, and images.

Get a Custom Look and Feel with Static FBML

One of the best apps for business Facebook pages is Static FBML.  This Facebook-developed application lets you create and display FBML (Facebook Markup Language) boxes and tabs on your Page.

One of the easiest ways for a small business to take advantage of FMBL is to create boxes that will display content and links to direct your fans — Facebook users who subscribe to your Page — back to your Web site. For example, you may want to show your logo and offer hyperlinks to specific content or products on your site. You can use FBML to invite fans to join your mailing list, get a discount on your site or even highlight a special promotion or contest you're currently running in the box.

When you add the FBML application to your Page, you simply click "Edit," enter a title for the box, and then paste in the HTML code you want to render on your Facebook Page. If you have a lot of experience with HTML and scripting, you will be able to do a lot more with Static FBML — but even if you have just basic HTML skills, you can create an attractive and well-branded box for your Page.

Use Static FBML on your Facebook Page to display branded content, images and links.

 In Figure 1, you can see an example of FBML in use on the Webopedia.com Facebook Page. This image shows a side-by-side view of how you customize the application to include your own HTML code, and how that code is rendered in a branded and customized box on your Facebook Page.

 Display Custom Content with RSS Feeds
 
Another way to customize your Facebook Page is to display your RSS feeds. This can help automate the process of providing new content and updates to your fans each day. Social RSS (formerly RSS-Connect) is one of several apps for RSS feeds.

On your Facebook Page, you can display Social RSS on your Wall or as a Boxes tab. It will automatically update, and your fans can also subscribe to your feed right from the Facebook app. 

Once you add Social RSS to your Page, again you can click "Edit" and customize the app with your own feed URL.  Social RSS offers a number of feed settings. You can title the feed (e.g. use your site or blog name), choose how often to automatically check for updates, customize display options for the Facebook Box, and choose to send updates to your Facebook Page.

SocialRSS lets you display your site or blog RSS feed on your Facebook Wall.

In Figure 2, you can see an example of SocialRSS in use on the Webopedia.com Facebook Page. This image shows a side-by-side view of how you customize the RSS Feed application to include your own blog or Site feed URL, and how your customized Social RSS box will appear on your Facebook Page.

 Interact with Fans Using Facebook Events

If your business is holding a special event — perhaps an open house or an online sale — you can use Facebook Events to tell your fans all about it. You can access Facebook Events by clicking the calendar icon under your Status Box. Once the Event details window opens, you provide a title, a location and the date and time for the event.

When your event is published on your Facebook Page, fans will have the opportunity to RSVP by selecting one of three options; Attending, Not attending, or Maybe Attending. Fans can also attach an RSVP note and share your Event on their own Facebook Profile.

Use Static FBML on your Facebook Page to display branded content, images and links.

In Figure 3, you can see an example of Facebook Events in use on the Webopedia.com Facebook Page. The image shows a side-by-side view of how you add your details to the Event app, and how the customized Event notice will appear on the status feed on your Facebook Page.

More Facebook Apps for Business

While these apps let you maximize your own brand identity on Facebook, there are other apps that you can use.  While most Facebook apps include advertising links, if you find an app that that has some value for your fans, you can add it on a secondary Boxes Tab so it doesn't detract from your own branding on your Page's Wall tab.

To view thousands of other Facebook apps, choose "Edit Page" from your Facebook Page, and then select "Browse More Applications." You can also search for apps from your personal Facebook Profile.