A recent question by a fan of the Out-Smarts Facebook page regarding ‘giveaways’ prompted us to take a close look at Facebook’s rules and regulations
regarding contests, promotions and giveaways on their site. Running a promotion on Facebook is an effective way of generating buzz about your business, increasing the number of ‘likes’ your page has, increasing engagement with existing fans, and even adding to your business’ email list.
However, Facebook has some specific guidelines regarding these promotions, and most giveaways and contests on Facebook are actually in direct violation of these terms! Below, we will decode the legalese and give you the information you need to avoid being in violation of Facebook’s promotion guidelines and having your business page shut down.
First, you should ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do people enter your contest by ‘liking’ your business page?
2. Is your promotion being run on your Facebook fan pages wall? For example, do people enter your promotion by liking posts or leaving a comment?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, your promotion is illegal and you are at risk for Facebook shutting down your business page.
Basically, if you are using Facebook in any way to run or support your contest, you are in violation of their promotion guidelines. Instead, you need to run your promotion on a third party application such as Wildfire, Involver, Friend2Friend, and other similar application builders – see Facebook’s list of preferred developer consultants. You can also create your own custom application by building an iframe and running your promotion from there. See ‘create a custom iframe tab for your facebook page’ for how to make your own iframe application.
What does Facebook consider a promotion?
Before going further, we should clear up what exactly Facebook considers a promotion.
By “contest” or “competition” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria).
By “sweepstakes” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner selected on the basis of chance.
Basically, any sort of promotion of Facebook in which you will be choosing a winner in some way has to follow their promotion guidelines. Furthermore, the guidelines go on to say that you cannot use any of Facebook’s features in your promotion, ie as a condition of entering your promotion you cannot have users ‘liking’ your page or posts, uploading pictures to your page, or commenting on your posts or wall. Lastly, you cannot use Facebook in any way to announce your winner, either by posting the winner’s name on your wall, posting their photo on your wall, or contacting them through Facebook chat or a message.
Note: Acondition of your promotion could be that users need to be fans of your page, but that alone cannot enter them into the promotion. They need to take some further action on a third party application or iframe in order to ensure your promotion is legally within Facebook’s guidelines. Read more
Google recently unveiled their new social button, “+1”, pronounced “plus one” and digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool”.The +1 is similar to the ubiquitous Facebook ‘like’ button in that it allows users to share content they find on the internet with their friends and contacts. This content can be anything you find interesting, from websites and news articles to organic and paid search results.
How the +1 button works
When you use Google search, the +1 button will appear next to both organic and paid search results. When you mouse over the +1 button, its outline will color, and when you click the button it will shade in, as you can see in the example below.
You have the option to undo your +1 if you change your mind, or accidentally clicked the mouse on a result you didn’t want to +1.
It is important to remember that Google +1’s will be publicly visible to all people viewing the content you +1’d. If people are a part of your social connections – made up of your Google contacts, Gmail chat lists, and people you follow with Google Reader – they will be able to see that you personally +1’d something. If a person is outside of your social connections they will see an anonymous tally of total +1’s. Remember to only +1 sites and results that you don’t mind everyone knowing you like!
Currently, the +1 button is only available in search results, but soon webmasters will be able to add the +1 widget to their websites similar to how they’ve probably already installed a Facebook ‘like’ widget.
Get started with Google +1
First of all, you will need to create a Google Profile, or upgrade your existing one. Once you have an up-to-date Google Profile, you will be able to see a listing of all your +1’s, essentially you will be able to ‘bookmark’ the page in your Google Profile for future easy access. From your Profile you will also be able to edit and delete your +1’s if you no longer want to publicly endorse that item. To see and interact with +1 in search results you will need to be logged into your Google Account while you are using Google search.
Google is currently phasing +1 into all their search platforms, starting with Google.com. If you can’t see the +1 buttons yet, and would like to, you can opt-in by going to their experimental search site and clicking ‘Join this experiment’.
The Effects for Businesses
CTR and Adwords
The +1 button is bound to affect the click through rate of both organic and paid search results. Users are much more likely to click on results that have been endorsed by someone within their community whose opinion they trust. Users will not only be able to see the total number of +1’s for that particular result but also the names of people they know that have endorsed that result. Also, Adwords users will soon be able to see +1 statistics for their ads. There will not be a way to remove the +1 button from your ads; however, Google has stated the +1 button will not affect the way they calculate an ad’s quality score.
SEO
The +1 button will have a direct impact on search results. Google has stated they are more likely to crawl, or recrawl, pages that have +1’s and store the title and content of that page. Furthermore, it is quite likely that results with +1’s will appear higher in Google search results than a similar result that hasn’t been +1’d. We all know that social media affects Google’s ranking algorithm, and +1’s are public endorsements of trusted and popular results – this is sure to affect SEO.
For more information about the +1 button, view the following video from Google:
With online ad spending hitting new highs, Internet advertising is becoming one of the key tools that companies use to attract attention for their product or service online and online ads are beginning to eclipse traditional advertising.
History
Hardly a new concept is it? Advertising has been used ever since mass production became possible well over a century ago as a means to influence an audience with the intention of getting them to buy your product or service. You just need to read Claude Hopkin’s 1923 book on the topic called Scientific Advertising to understand the importance advertising has had from a business perspective for the last century (and many of his points still apply today).
Recently however traditional media advertising (TV, newspaper, billboards etc) has faced a tough challenges with readership and viewer numbers plummeting, savvy audiences becoming desensitized to traditional advertising techniques and with the rise of alternative ways to influence target audiences (such as social media).
One of the saving graces for advertising is the ability to use the Internet to advertise online. Online advertising has a few advantages over traditional advertising:
Less Expensive
Highly Targeted
East To Track Effectiveness
There are a number of different forms of online advertising, each with its own pros and cons.
Search Based Ads
Usually associated with search engine results ads like Google Adwords and one of the most commonly used forms on online advertising, search based ads are predominantly text based and appear as sponsored or paid ads when people search for a particular phrase or keyword online.With search ads you pay or bid on an ad appearing to a searcher (impressions) or when someone clicks on the ad (pay per click). These ads are highly targeted because they appear only to the people who enter pertinent related keywords. If you have a new website this is a great way to get noticed by the major search engines, and really useful if you are going after new audiences. The key to being successful using these ads is to use very specific key terms that you know potential clients will use and to make the most of them in the ad text.
Banner Ads
Banner ads (or web banners), are for the most part, rectangular image ads that appear on another organisation’s website. Pop on over the Entrepreneurial Woman’s website and you will see an example of a banner as right at the top of the page. One important consideration with banner advertising is that you should only post your ads on sites that are related to your product or service or that attract your target audience. Banner ad costs can vary according to the traffic the site gets and can be on a pay per click basis or on a time based (i.e. monthly) fee basis.
Email Ads
Not to be overlooked, more people use email on a regular basis than use any other online tools. Having a regular opt-in marketing newsletter should be part of every company’s online advertising strategy to promote its products or services. Email advertising can also include buying placements in the newsletters of related companies.
Network Advertising
Advertising networks companies make it easier for organisations to advertise on related sites. Google Adwords is an example of a tool that facilitate network advertising and this is a growing area with companies like Tribal Fusion acting as facilitators between publishers of high trafficked content and organisations looking to advertise to their large audiences.
Pop Up Ads
Those annoying ads that pop up on your screen unexpectedly and won’t go away. Spare your audience and don’t use them.
Online Classifieds
Just like traditional classifieds, online ads on classifieds sites are used for the most part by the general public to buy or sell and by companies that target consumers. Craigslist and Kijiji are just 2 examples of online classifieds – they are easy to set up and free to use but before you do consider if this is appropriate to your brand.
Social Network Advertising
Many of the major social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter allow you to advertise and these social ads are the fastest growing form of online advertising. The biggest benefit of advertising using social networks is that your ads can be aimed at a very highly targeted audience and you can get started with just a few dollars per day to test the waters.
Online advertising tools make it easy for companies to use adverts to reach their audience online and can be a huge driver of targeted traffic to your website. If you are considering your online advertising strategy and would like more information about our services please contact us.
Social media web-based dashboard, Hootsuite, overhauled their analytics capabilities earlier this month resulting in powerful, customizable reporting tools for users. New features include the ability to track Twitter brand mentions and measure your Twitter follower growth, examine Facebook Insights for your page including ‘likes’ and demographic information, overlay social link clicks and website visits via Google, and over 30 report modules with which to create customized reports.
Social analytics is accessible from the left sidebar on your Hootsuite dashboard. To begin, click ‘Analytics’, then ‘Custom Analytics’ and then ‘Create New Report’. You’ll see a screen that looks like this:
From here, you can choose to create a completely customized report, or choose from one of four report templates. Regardless of which template you choose, you can customize it with your logo, header, and contact information. The custom report also allows you to arrange modules so that information is presented in a certain order, as well as include up to 30 different charts and graphs.
If you choose to build a customized report, you will see a blank canvas that looks like this:
To add modules to this report, you hover over the plus sign on your module of choice from the list on the left-hand side.
You may have noticed that some of the templates cost a certain number of points. This is a new feature whereby modules are available through Hootsuite’s custom point payment system. There are 3 levels of Hootsuite packages – Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. The basic level is free, but users are limited in the modules they can access. To access all modules, users mush upgrade to Hootsuite Pro for $5.99 a month. Pro users will be given 50 free points. Each module costs a certain number of points, as do the report templates. Most modules cost 10-20 points each, with the more sophisticated graphs and charts costing up to 30 points. When users have run out of points they have the option to purchase more. Hootsuite Pro users will end up paying a bit more per month with these new features; however, the analytical insights will be a great asset in quantifying your social media efforts.
For more details about social analytics, here’s a video from Hootsuite:
Recently, Facebook updated their business pages and in the process they replaced FBML with iFrames for creating custom tabs. This means that instead of using FBML to create custom content on your page, you will now need to create a custom application and use an iFrame. Basically, an iFrame allows you to use content across different web domains through code which tells the website browser to request content from a different location. This enables you to display content from one webpage on another website, such as embedding a youtube video or flickr photo on your Facebook business page. IFrames are a bit more complicated than FBML, but we’ll walk you through the basic steps below.
1. Create the webpage you will be integrating with your Facebook page and upload it to your web server – making sure that the page will fit within the 520px wide size limit of Facebook. The iframe application that you will be creating will pull this content from your web server directly to Facebook.
2. Go to the Facebook Developers site to begin creating your application. Click ‘set up new app’ in the upper left-hand corner. This will take you to a screen that looks like the one below:
Fill in your application name – it’s easiest to make this the name of the custom tab you are creating, and click ‘create app’.
3. Now that you have created your app, you will be taken to the About Tab for your application. There are many options with your new application, but for basic custom tabs, our one recommendation is to change the icon. This way an icon of your choosing will show up on your page navigation bar under your page profile picture, instead of the default iframes icon. For best results, make sure the photo you upload is 16px x 16px.
4. Next, click ‘facebook integration’ on the upper left-hand side of the page.
These next steps are the most important in creating your custom iframes tab. It is where the integration happens between your webpage and Facebook. You will see a screen that looks like this:
5. Canvas URL: This is the url where the file you wish to integrate is located – remember to include ‘http://’. However, do not include the actual name of the file here. In other words, fill in everything but the name of your iframe file, instead the URL must have a trailing slash at the end. For example, if you webpage is hosted at http://www.mysite.com/webpage, only include http://www.mysite.com/. (You will fill in the name of the iframe file in a later field).
6. Secure Canvas URL: Re-enter the same URL as above, this time using ‘https://’ instead of ‘http://’.
7. Canvas Type: select iframe.
8. Iframe Size: Select ‘auto-resize’. This ensures that your webpage will fit neatly onto your Facebook page without users have to scroll left to right and up/down.
9. Tab Name: This is the name of your tab, such as ‘Welcome’ or ‘About’, you are limited to 16 characters here.
10. Tab URL: This is the name of the file you wish to integrate with Facebook. It is what you didn’t include in the above ‘canvas url’ field. For example, if your webpage is hosted at http://www.mysite.com/webpage, only include ‘webpage’ here.
11. Save your changes. You have created your first Facebook application!
12. The next step is adding your new application to your page. The screen you should see now includes the information on your new application. Do not submit your application, unless you want everyone to be able to add your custom iframe to their page through the Facebook Application Directory. Instead, click ‘application profile page’.
From here, you will be taken to an empty business page. On the left side under the profile image, click ‘add to my page’ and, if you have multiple business pages, click the appropriate one.
13. Go to the page you just added your application to, and hit refresh. Your new custom tab will appear in the list under your business page’s profile picture. Done!
You can make your custom tab the default landing page by going to ‘edit page’ and clicking ‘manage permissions’ on the left hand list. From here, use the drop down menu to choose your new application in the default landing tab field.
As you can see, iframes are a bit trickier than FBML. If you are looking for more guidance or have any questions, contact us at Out-Smarts Marketing.
Facebook recently updated their business pages, and the changes are overwhelmingly positive for page administrators. Many of the issues with business pages have been rectified with these new changes, and the new pages more align with the look and feel of personal profiles, making for a more streamlined user experience on Facebook.
On March 10th all Facebook pages will permanently switch over to the new pages. Currently, administrators can preview the new profile or choose to opt-in to the new profile. Why not upgrade early? You only live once! Besides, you’ll have to make the change in a few days, you might as well have the new page features figured out before then and be ahead of the curve.
Once you’ve clicked to upgrade your profile, here are some of the new features you will find:
Tabs have migrated:
Your tabs have moved from the bar at the top of page to below your page’s profile picture on the left hand side. This change aligns with recent personal profile changes and promotes a seamless user interface.
Photo Strip:
Similar to tabs now being placed on the left hand side to mirror personal profiles, there is now a photo strip at the top of pages. These highly visible photos can be used strategically by your business to promote your brand and engage fans of your page. They are also easily customizable, so you can hand pick which pictures appear in this strip. If you upload many photos, you can frequently change the photos that appear there to give repeat visitors an ever-changing visual on your page or, with a spare half hour, you can create an eye-catching montage such as the one below.
Your page now operates as a ‘person’:
You now have the option to switch back as forth between using Facebook as yourself, or as your page. For example, now I can post as ‘Out-Smarts’ on other walls as opposed to only being able to post as ‘Corrie Scott’. Furthermore, if you are using Facebook as your page, you now have a newsfeed customized to your page which you click ‘home’, and you have the ability to ‘like’ other pages as your brand. You can find the option to use Facebook as your page under ‘account’ as seen below or, if you go to your business page, you will find the option to ‘use facebook as your page’ on the right hand side under the ‘edit page’ button. You can return to using Facebook as yourself by following the same steps. This is a very handy feature as it allows you to post as your page on other walls, whereas, in the past you were only able to post as yourself.
Post as yourself on your page:
The opposite of above. In the past, I could only post to the Outsmarts page as ‘Outsmarts’, but now I have the option to post as ‘Corrie Scott’. To post as yourself on your page, click ‘edit page’, then ‘your settings’ on the left hand list, and uncheck the button called ‘posting preferences’. Click ‘save changes’ and now you can post to your page as yourself.
Receive notifications from your page:
You now receive email notifications about your page in the same way you receive notifications for your personal profile. If your page receives significant activity and the notifications are cluttering up your email, you have the option to turn off email so that you only see notifications when logged into Facebook as your brand. To turn off email notifications click to edit your page, click on ‘your settings’ and uncheck the box that says ‘email notifications’.
Featured likes and featured page owners:
‘Featured likes’ are simply a name change – this used to be ‘favorite pages’. Featured page owners allows you to showcase the administrators of your brand’s page. This allows you to further humanize your brand – if you want to connect yourself personally to your business page. To add either of these features to your page you need to again click to edit your page, this time click on ‘Featured’ and click to add either option.
Changes to your wall:
You can choose whether to show posts by just your brand, or allow fans to post to your wall as well – much like before. However, posts will no longer appear chronologically on your pages wall. Instead, posts now appear according to a ‘relevancy algorithm’ where posts that have had the most interaction will now appear at the top of your page. To see posts in chronological order you can click on ‘admin view’ under the ‘wall’ tab now located on the left under the page profile picture. Admins also have the option of deleting spam or inappropriate posts which will be filed under ‘Hidden Posts’ – you can always unhide these posts at a later time if you wish.
No more static FBML:
As of March 10th, Facebook no longer supports static FBML tabs. They will continue to support any custom tabs already created with FBML, but all new tabs must be developed using iFrames.
‘Suggest a page’:
This feature is no longer available for fans of your page. From now on only admins can suggest a page to their friends, instead fans can now ‘share’ a page. This is similar to the way users share other content on the site, and is Facebook’s attempt to be consistent across their entire site.
Today and over the next few weeks we will be taking a close look at social media for non profits: we will even share some of our “Social Media Strategy Smarts” specific to this sector with a view to helping you understand how using social media can benefit your organization and help it grow.
Keep It Simple and Achievable
The Out-Smarts mantra for our non profit clients has been “Keep It Simple and Achievable”. Adding social media tools to the strategy of non-profit business is essential in our networked world and tools such as Facebook, email, blogs and twitter are not only cost effective they also encourage a two-way conversation between people and organizations that can effectively increase the momentum and reach of a non-profit - but it has to be manageable given your time and resources.
Good Planning Makes for Good Fortune:
Non profits that focus first on developing a clear strategy are best positioned to succeed with an Social Media program. The first step is to develop a strategy that authentically reflects the organizations strategic goals and vision – whether the aim is to increase fund raising opportunities, engage volunteers or educate the public.
Here are some questions to explore to jump start your Non Profit Social Media strategy:
1. What do you want to accomplish with social media?
Determine how much time you can you allocate to your strategy?
If your Non Profit can answer most of these questions it is clearly ready to step out onto the Social Media stage with your message. Remember keep it simple and achievable. Treat your first steps as experimental. Go easy and record your successes and challenges to share with others.
Many businesses would like to have a strong social media presence, but are put off by the sheer number of social networks available. It’s easy to get overwhelmed but remember, you don’t have to be on all social networking sites. In fact, being on sites that don’t directly speak to your target audience, or on sites that your target audience doesn’t frequently visit, can be detrimental to your business, and a waste of your valuable time.
A good place to start when entering the realm of social media is with the heavy hitters; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for video content, and your business blog. If this list still seems overwhelming, don’t despair! There’s a way to connect all these social networking sites so you’re not spending half your day posting the same YouTube link to all your different followers.
It is best to set up Facebook as your hub when connecting all your different social networking sites. This is because Facebook has a huge amount of applications that have been developed for all sorts of social networking related purposes. All you have to do is go to the Facebook Application Directory and search for the appropriate application, chances are it’s there in the directory. Next up, how to connect your blog, Twitter, and Youtube accounts to Facebook.
Blog:
Connecting your blog to Facebook means that each time you update your blog it automatically posts to your Facebook page’s wall, as well as archiving in the ‘notes’ tab of your page. The process for linking your blog isn’t obvious when looking at your Facebook page, but it’s well worth the search. To begin, click on ‘edit’ below your page’s profile picture. Next, click on ‘Apps’ in the list on the left hand side of the screen. Once there, find the Notes application and click ‘Go to App’. Now, on the left hand side of the screen you should see ‘Edit import settings’ as the very last option. Click this. You should now see a screen that looks like the photo below.
From here, enter the url of your blog and click ‘start importing’. Your blog is now auto posting to your Facebook page.
Twitter:
To connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts, log into your business’ Twitter account, then open a separate tab and go here. Find your business page, click ‘link to Twitter’ and follow the directions.
Youtube:
Using the Cueler application, you can connect your Youtube and Facebook accounts so that videos posted to your Youtube channel automatically post to your Facebook page as well. To do this, click here, and then click ‘install’. This will bring you to a screen that looks like this:
Choose the page you want to add the application to, and follow the directions to automatically post Youtube videos to a new Youtube tab on your Facebook page.
Following the above steps will help reduce the amount of time it takes to update your social media accounts. However, don’t forget to manually update your accounts as well. A mix of manual updates and auto posting allows you to save time, but also ensure that your business maintains a humanistic and approachable presence online. Also, if people follow your business across multiple social networking channels, taking the time to manually post, along with auto posting, ensures they won’t continuously see the exact same content numerous times.
We can help:
If you are interested in connecting your social media accounts and are looking for more guidance, contact us at Out-Smarts Marketing – we provide social media and internet marketing planning services to help you achieve your online goals.
If your New Year’s resolution is to get your business in order, then putting together and implementing social media plan to help you use the Internet more effectively should be top of your to do list today. If the thought of getting started has you procrastinating, then you’ve come to the right blog post to kick start your New Year online. Here is how to go about creating a social media strategy document that works for you.
Go Easy – Remember that your strategy document doesn’t need to be war and peace. It can be as long or as short as you want/need it to be but it must be documented (even if its just in bullet form) and achievable given your market economics.
Research – All great marketing plans begin with one thing: research. Before you start take time to do some research: find out what your competition is doing online, ask your clients which social networking sites they use, identify peers and luminaries in your industry and find out how they use social media. Doing this will help put social media in perspective and will allow you to set realistic goals.
Your Social Media Plan Should Include
Overview – Your plan should of the current situation so that you have a yardstick for comparisons. How many followers do you have right now? What is your social media presence and what resources you have available? The overview should also include a short statement that encompasses the purpose of your plan.
Audience – Define your target audience: ages, location, sex, education etc. Knowing who you want to target makes hitting the mark much more likely.
Goals – Define your goals in quantitative terms and make sure they are achievable given your resources. Applicable social media goals might be to increase website traffic by X%, to increase your Facebook by X, to grow blog subscribers or to build interactions (how many times people interact with your site including replies, comments, clicks etc). Remember that goals should be time sensitive.
Measure – An important part of goal setting is determining how you will measure success. If website traffic traffic is a priority the Google Analytics is a great tool to use. If it is building your network or interaction then follower count and insights should be used.
Tools - Identify and document which social media or digital networks you will use. This decision should be based on the research conducted earlier – the decisions you make here are important. If you have little time and are looking to network then Twitter’s short sharp 140 character bursts might be right for you (especially if moms, Justin Beiber fans and techs are your target audience). If you have a very visual offering then YouTube might be the most appropriate tool. The key here is to use only a few tools and choose the ones that are most likely to give you access to your target community.
Message – What is it that you want to communicate online, what impression do you want to make? Write it down! Encompass this in a few sentences and bear in mind that brand visuals and your communications style online should mirror those offline. Consistency is key and if different people are managing your presence, it is important that they “act” in the company manner online.
Schedule – Social media can be time consuming and distracting if you are not focused. To help you stay on track, schedule social media marketing time into your day and keep to that schedule.
Implementing Your Social Media Plan
Your social media strategy plan should be an organic document that can be tweaked and enhanced as you go. Once you engage and gain experience using social media, you will quickly learn what works and what doesn’t in your community. Use your social media experiences to hone your plan so that it can evolve and become even more effective.
Not Traditional Marketing
It is very important to remember when implementing your plan that this is not a traditional marketing project. It is not all about pushing out information online, it is about building relationships, communities and interacting. Bear that in mind, build an appropriate strategy, get social and you can’t go wrong.
We Can Help
Out-Smarts provides social media and Internet marketing planning services. If your social media strategy is top of the prioirity list for 2011 but your strapped for time, call us – we’d love to assist.
A business page is the business equivalent to a personal profile, and has a few advantages over the alternative of setting up a Facebook group for your company, although both have their strong points. Our previous post, Facebook for Business: Groups or Pages discusses the merits of both options, and you can always have both a group and a page for your company. However, between the two options, a Facebook page is probably the best way for a business to have a presence on Facebook.
A good analogy for pages vs. groups is to think of a Facebook page as a separate entity that is your business, whereas a Facebook group more closely resembles a club for your business. In other words, pages focus more on a business, whereas groups focus more on a shared interest in that business. With a page, updates and notices are seen as coming from the page itself, the names of the administrators are not listed, and your personal Facebook profile is not linked to the page which allows you to maintain personal privacy. With a group, you can control who joins your group, administrators are listed, your personal profile is linked to the page, updates come directly from you, and there is a 5000 member limit (no such limit exists for pages).
There are also a number of other features that are exclusive to Facebook pages. One key difference is that, unlike groups, a page is indexed by external search engines and shows up very high in Google search results. Pages also have the ability to add an application, which allows you to customize your page, show more content, and adopt a cohesive online presence. You can either use Static FBML to create your own customized tabs, or browse the Facebook Application Directory for a complete list of all the Facebook applications that can be added to pages. For the above reasons, a page not only appears more professional but also allows for much greater flexibility and room to grow as your customer base expands.
How to Create A Facebook Page:
Creating a Facebook business page is a simple process, just click here and choose whether you are a local business, brand, product, or organization, or an artist, band, or public figure. It is obvious which user type should pick the last category; however, it can be harder to pick between the first two. You should select local business if you strictly sell your product or services locally, and plan to continue this way in the future. For all other businesses, you should select brand, product, or organization. Also, if you chose local business, the template for the page is set up as if you are a brick and mortar business, whereas the brand, product, or organization choice gives you less restrictive info tab options for inputting your information. Choose carefully because once you have selected a category, you cannot change it without deleting your page and starting from scratch!
Once you have chosen your category, name your page, i.e. the name of your business, accept the terms, and click Create Official Page. Done! Again, name your business carefully. You cannot change it once youve created your page.
Now, fill out your new business page with all of your business information, in the same way that you would a personal profile. Finally, once youve completely filled in your profile, promote your new Facebook page and begin to grow your following. There are a number of ways to do this including, providing great content, targeting advertisements towards your target customers, and using Facebook suggestions to suggest your page to people who may be interested.
Remember to install Facebook Insights so you can track and measure your success using important metrics such as the number of fans added/lost per day, total fans, number of reviews, page views, unique views, photo views, video and audio plays, as well as total interactions. Also, dont forget to add your location details, hours of operation, and phone number to the information section so customers can find you offline as well, and remember to regularly update your page with new content to keep your customers engaged.
If you would like more information on Facebook pages, or need help creating one for your business, Out-Smarts Marketing can help – we provide social networking training and consulting services to help you use social media tools effectively. Contact us now to find out more.
Hardly a new concept is it? Advertising has been used ever since mass production became possible well over a century ago as a means to influence an audience with the intention of getting them to buy your product or service. You just need to read Claude Hopkin’s 1923 book on the topic called Scientific Advertising to understand the importance advertising has had from a business perspective for the last century (and many of his points still apply today).
Usually associated with search engine results ads like 
e. One important consideration with banner advertising is that you should only post your ads on sites that are related to your product or service or that attract your target audience. Banner ad costs can vary according to the traffic the site gets and can be on a pay per click basis or on a time based (i.e. monthly) fee basis.
