However, some ads get rejected for good, while for others, there’s simply no way to edit the Facebook ad to make it appropriate for the platform.

We’ll guide you through all the situations in which you may find your Facebook Ads rejected. In addition, we’ll cover where to find the rejected ads, how to fix them up, and what measures you can take if none of your corrections resolve the problem.

Keep reading to get your money’s worth with Facebook ads and learn all about how to handle Facebook Ads getting rejected.

Table of contents:

• Facebook Ads rejected? Why did it happen?
• Where to look to figure out if/why your Facebook Ad was rejected
• How to submit a review after Facebook Ads are rejected
• How to contact support after your ad gets rejected

#Facebook #ads rejected? Why it happened and how to #fix it

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Facebook Ads rejected? Why did it happen?

Facebook has a long list of restricted and prohibited content in its policies. The restricted content is allowed but you must follow certain rules, often based on your locale. Prohibited content is never allowed on Facebook.

There’s a much longer list, but here are some of the main reasons Facebook Ads get rejected due to violations with restricted content:

Of course, some content is completely rejected from Facebook as prohibited content. Some examples include:

Where to look to figure out if/why your Facebook Ad was rejected

The first step in handling a rejected ad is to actually figure out if it was rejected in the first place. I’ve noticed that I’ve never received an email for a rejected or pending Facebook Ad, so it’s easy to publish an advertisement, leave Facebook, then realize later that it hasn’t been running at all.

Therefore, we recommend sticking around on Facebook for a few minutes to see if your recent ad has passed the initial automated test. In general, it’s best to check back in with Facebook until you’re absolutely certain the ad has reached the “Published” or “Active” level.

So, let’s say you just clicked the Publish or Boost Post Now buttons. You feel you’ve followed all the rules and designed an appealing advertisement and set the right audience. Where do you look to figure out if the Facebook Ad has been rejected or accepted?

Begin by looking at your main Facebook profile dashboard. There, seek out the Ads Manager button. Click on that.

There are actually several other ways to see your past ads on Facebook, such as the Business Suite page or the Ad Center. We still feel the Ads Manager is by far the easiest option for handling new, old, and future ads, yet the Business Suite has some additional tools for designing larger campaigns.

Once in the Ads Manager, you’ll see a summary of your past ads, tools to generate new ads, and filters for viewing ads for up to 90 days.

Scroll down on this page to reveal your past ads.

Your most recent ads get listed one-by-one, with information about the reach, thruplays, and amount spent for each successful ad.

However, you can also see red-lettered warnings from the ads that received the Rejected tag.

These are the ones that we’re concerned about in this situation.

As an alternative, you can find the rejected Facebook Ads on the Facebook Business Suite page. Go down to the Recent Ads section for a similar list from the one in the Ads Manager.

Again, all Rejected ads receive that same red message. Seeing as how they’re rejected, all metrics should show zeroes.

Finally, Facebook also tends to warn you of rejected ads in the Notifications panel. View these notifications by clicking on the dropdown menu in the upper menu of Facebook.

Keep in mind that I’ve experienced a few rejected Facebook Ads in the past, and the most reliable places to see rejections are within the Ads Manager or the Facebook Business Suite.

I’ve rarely received emails from Facebook about rejected ads, and the Notifications tab often takes a day or two to update you about a pending ad. In my experience, there have been times when the Notifications tab didn’t reveal a message about an ad being rejected. So, although it can help in some situations, I wouldn’t rely on the Notifications panel for an important advertisement that needs publishing.

For instance, the following notification came in about 45 minutes after I tried to publish my Facebook Ad.

It also included a little notification at the bottom of my screen.

Again, these are helpful reminders, but easy to miss. Not to mention, they take a little longer to show up, or they don’t appear at all.

Your best course of action is sticking with one of the other methods for viewing rejected Facebook Ads.

How to submit a review after Facebook Ads are rejected

All Facebook Ads go through several automated review processes prior to publication. By automated, we mean that algorithms and bots handle the heavy lifting. This can end up frustrating for some trying to advertise since it’s not exactly an easy task trying to reason with a computer or robot about an ad that should not get rejected. After the initial automation, you have the opportunity to reach out to the Facebook customer support team. However, that’s a last-ditch effort, and usually not an effective one, as Facebook customer support can take some time to reply, and they often can’t provide any leeway for your advertisement.

With that said, there are two ways to dispute ad rejections: automatically or by sending an email to customer support.

The first step is to submit your Facebook Ad for approval. All ads received this treatment, seeing as how Facebook must field all sorts of ad content ranging from illegal to immoral.

A message appears after you submit an ad. It should say that your Ad Status is In Review.

Using the techniques to check the status of your ad (covered in the previous section), go to the Ads Manager to see what’s going on with your most recent ad.

In general, an ad that follows all the rules and looks professional enough for publication receives a green “Active” message next to it.

However, a red “Rejected” message tells you that the automated Facebook review system flagged your ad for violating its rules.

Whether you find this justified or not, there’s no way to fix the problem unless you edit the ad and resubmit it for further review.

Therefore, click on the View Results button next to the Facebook Ad in question.

All rejected Facebook Ads include details about why it was rejected in the first place.

You get a red icon and message along with a lengthy description of the rule you broke. More often than not, it has something to do with the content within the ad or the audience you planned on targeting.

Below is a great example. I tried to run an ad for a real estate open house. However, the real estate industry has several laws in place (in the US) that prevent discrimination based on things like race, income, and gender.

It turns out I chose to target my Facebook Ad to people in a certain income class. Now, you might think that would be acceptable considering real estate is often only purchased by those who can afford it. However, the law says that you can’t block out people from seeing a potential real estate opportunity just because they don’t make a certain amount of money.

What’s nice about the View Results section is that it provides quick information about the rule and additional links to read about running ads in special ad categories (like real estate, politics, employment, and credit) and for information about discrimination. It depends on which rule you break, so you may see links to other clarifying documents.

It often seems easy to immediately click on the Request Review button to try and force your ad through. However, you’re much better off editing the ad and trying to remove the questionable content or targeting practices. After that, you can select the Request Review button and show that you made a good faith effort to fix all problems.

For now, click on the Edit Ad button for the rejected Facebook Ad.

Each case varies in terms of the edits required.

You may find that you need to remove personal or inappropriate content within the text or photo of your advertisement. Other times, you might have to change the target audience or remove some of the filters you have included.

For this example, I have to check the Special Ad Category box and specify that I’m posting an ad about housing.

Furthermore, I need to edit the Audience Details, seeing as how I’m not allowed to target customers based on things like gender or income level.

The final step, after making edits to the original ad, is to go back to the View Results page and click on the Request Review button. This brings up one popup window to confirm that you have made the appropriate modifications to the Facebook Ad and would like to have it reviewed once more.

Keep in mind that you may have to click the Request Review button multiple times if you violated more than one rule.

The review process may take a little longer than the initial rejection. To check on the status of your review, go back to the Ads Manager page to see the status. Messages like “Approved,” “In Review,” and “Rejected” are all possible.

The end goal is to see the “In Review” message change to an “Approved” or “Active” message.

If you once again receive a “Rejected” message, continue onto the following steps to complete a more formal request.

How to contact support after your ad gets rejected

A Facebook Ad rejected for the second time typically gets placed into a category of “Unchanged,” meaning the rejection status remains the same. A great place to monitor more detailed information about your status is on the Account Quality page on Facebook.

It’s important to monitor this page because too many problems on your ad account could get you banned from posting. They may also remove your Facebook account completely.

On this page, you can see which ads are available for another review. For most ads, you get one try to fix the problems, follow the rules and submit for another review. If you fail that review, the ad typically gets sent to the Unchanged bin, where it can’t be edited. In that case, you must start a new ad altogether.

Not all ads receive an opportunity for another review. The ones that get completely rejected are those that are blatantly immoral or illegal, like ads with references to hate-speech or radicalism.

However, sometimes you want better customer support than an automated algorithm.

In that case, go back to the View Results page for the ad in question. You can find the View Results button for the ad within the Ads Manager page on Facebook.

Click on the “…” ellipsis icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

This shows a dropdown menu with several options.

Select the Contact Support button to proceed.

This delivers you to the Facebook for Business knowledgebase. It’s not human customer support, but it could help guide you down a path to correcting a rejected ad. We recommend browsing through the articles and potentially typing in “ad rejected” to see the most relevant pieces.

As for true human support, there’s not much to expect from Facebook.

However, Facebook does have hundreds of specific contact forms (that are very difficult to find) to reach a customer support rep for certain problems.

The form for Ads Pending Review for More Than 24 Hours is the closest thing to a direct contact form for Facebook Ad questions. You may even be able to get a response for slightly different concerns, as long as Facebook Ads are involved.

In conclusion

The key with a declined Facebook Ad is to keep calm and play the game.

Although it’s frustrating that Facebook hardly offers any customer support, you can do yourself a favor by simply editing the ad the right way and submitting it again for review.

#Facebook #ads rejected? Here's what you can do about it

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Cutting corners could automatically block an ad, after which you’ll have a tough time getting in touch with a real person.

Have questions on how to not make Facebook reject your ads? Ask in the comments section below.

The post Facebook Ads Rejected? Why It Happened and How to Fix It appeared first on Revive Social.

The importance of Facebook reviews for growing your business

People no longer just use Facebook as a way to connect with family and friends. They use it to find and connect with brands, products, and services. Additionally, they use it to share their thoughts and opinions. At the intersection of these two use cases are Facebook reviews.

When you create a local business page with Facebook, users can leave ratings and reviews. (Note: Recently, Facebook updated its traditional reviews to ‘Recommendations’ to include more features, though the concept is largely the same.)

The importance of customer reviews in online marketing is paramount. Research by Market Force Information discovered that 82 percent of consumers say they read and trust local business reviews. In fact, approximately 91 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations.

The influence of customer reviews applies to social platforms such as Facebook. According to research, two in three Facebook users visit a local business page at least once per week. More, approximately one-third of users use the platform to look for recommendations and reviews.

Put simply, your Facebook reviews matter. They are a key component of social proof, which can be used to improve the credibility and trustworthiness of your business. In turn, this can lead to an increase in customer loyalty as well as a boost in sales and search rankings.

A quick guide for enabling Facebook reviews for your business page

Before we get into how you can encourage customers to leave reviews, it’s important to first make sure that your page lets them in the first place.  If you’ve already configured these settings, feel free to skip this step.

However, if you just created a new Facebook business page or are unsure whether reviews are enabled, it’s worth double-checking. To enable reviews on your Facebook page, login to your page, then click on the Settings tab in the top-right corner, followed by Templates and Tabs in the left-hand navigation:

Under the Tabs section, there should be a Reviews item. If there’s not, scroll to the bottom, click on the Add a Tab button, then select Add Tab next to Reviews.

To the right of the Reviews tab, click on the Settings button. Next to Show Reviews, make sure the switch is toggled to the ‘ON’ setting:

When you’re finished, click on the Save button.

You can check to make sure you successfully enabled Facebook reviews by going to your page. There should be a tab for Reviews in the left-hand column:

It’s worth mentioning that Facebook determines the rating of a business page based on reviews and recommendations. The only way users can see the rating of your page is if you have the recommendations turned on.

How to get more reviews for your Facebook page (4 key tips)

Now we’ve covered the importance of Facebook reviews and made sure your page is configured for them, it’s time to learn how to generate those reviews in significant numbers. Let’s take a look at four key tips you can use to get more reviews on your Facebook page.

1. Create off-site, automated follow-up emails to send to customers

If you want something, sometimes all it takes is simply asking. When it comes to asking people to perform a specific task, such as leaving you a Facebook review, timing is everything.

A good time to ask customers for a review is after they have purchased something from you or used one of your services. You can do this by sending a post-purchase follow-up email.

How you phrase the emails will, of course, depend on your business. However, as an example, you could use something along the lines of, “Thank you for your purchase!  We value your opinion, so we’d really appreciate you taking a minute to leave us a Facebook review.” Within the email, you can include a link that will bring them directly to your Facebook page.

To create these emails, we recommend using an email marketing tool such as Sendinblue:

Sendinblue lets you choose from a variety of email templates, or you can create your own. After you sign up for your account and choose a plan, you can use the email automation feature.

2. Add a Call To Action (CTA) button to your website asking for Facebook reviews

If you want to generate more Facebook reviews, it’s important to have a clear CTA button on your website. There’s a good chance you already have social icons on your site connecting to your various social channels, including Facebook.

However, you can take this one step further by using a CTA for the reviews and recommendations specifically. To do this, consider using a plugin such as Social Reviews & Recommendations:

This WordPress plugin lets you display Facebook reviews and recommendations on your website as a sidebar widget. When your site visitors see a feed with reviews from real customers, it can help increase their confidence and trust regarding your brand. If you upgrade to the business plan, you can also add a CTA button asking users to write a review.

After you install and activate the plugin, you can connect it to your Facebook page by going to Settings > Facebook Reviews from your WordPress admin dashboard:

Under the Shortcode tab, you can log in to your Facebook directly, or connect the widget by entering your Page Name and Page ID. This is also where you can customize the appearance and display of the widget.

3. Encourage customers to ‘check-in’ to your business

Most social media users enjoy sharing what they’re doing and where they are with their followers, which is why many ‘check-in’ to places on Facebook. Check-ins are Facebook’s version of geotags, which helps to boost your presence on Facebook.

When someone checks-in to your business on Facebook, it shares the post with their followers. Then, when someone hovers over your business name, a preview of your page will appear:

A check-in is a form of an endorsement or recommendation, especially when it’s accompanied by photos or a compliment. As we covered earlier, recommendations and posts from friends can go a long way in influencing people.

So how can encouraging your customers to check-in lead to more reviews? After a user checks in somewhere, Facebook will usually send an automated reminder asking them to rate or review their experience. This gentle nudge can be all it takes for them to leave a recommendation.

You might also consider offering customers an incentive for checking in. For example, you could offer them a discount or a freebie. A small incentive can go a long way in encouraging customers to check-in and, eventually, leave a review.

It’s important to make sure your business page is configured to allow check-ins. To do this, log in to your Facebook page, then click on the Edit Page Info button at the top. Under the Location section, there will be a box next to Customers visit my business at my street address:

Make sure the box is checked, then click on the Save Changes button. If the box was already checked, you don’t have to do anything.

4. Respond to every review you get

You can help visitors form a favorable impression of your business by playing an active role in the reviews. One way to do that is to respond to every review you get – both the positive and negative ones.

Doing so establishes a certain level of transparency and authenticity. While your initial reaction to a bad review might be to delete it, negative reviews can actually help. Research shows that bad reviews can improve conversions by 67 percent. Plus, bad reviews present the opportunity to demonstrate strong customer service.

You can respond to negative reviews by letting the customer know you appreciate their input. Then, express your desire to change their impression of your business. You could offer them a discount or ask for contact information to further discuss their experience and ways to improve.

For positive reviews, you can simply thank them and let them know you appreciate their taking the time to leave a review. This show of recognition and appreciation may even encourage others to leave reviews.

To make responding to your Facebook reviews easier, we recommend turning on your page notifications. That way, you’ll know immediately when someone leaves a review so you can respond in a timely manner.

To do this, login to your Facebook business page and click on Settings > Notifications:

You can enable notifications for any activity on your page. If you only want to receive notifications for reviews, click the Turn On link next to New Page Reviews.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve discussed four tips you can use to get more Facebook reviews:

1. Create automated follow-up emails to send customers.
2. Add a Call To Action button on your website asking for Facebook reviews.
3. Encourage customers to check-in to your business.
4. Respond to every Facebook review you get.

Do you have any questions about getting reviews on your Facebook page? Let us know in the comments section below!

* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, we’ll receive a commission. No worries though, you’ll still pay the standard amount so there’s no cost on your part.

The post 4 Strategies to Get More Facebook Reviews for Your Business appeared first on Revive Social.

The change means 3D artists and creators will be able to share richer, higher-quality 3D content. For users, it means more detailed interactive posts that let you scroll around in a 360 view of an object and tapping or clicking to explore every angle of the graphic.

Facebook announced 3D compatibility for the news feed last October, but this month’s update adds support for the industry-standard file format.

According to Facebook’s creative director for social VR, Ocean Quigley, going 3D is a natural progression for the social network, which has moved from text, to photos, to videos, to 360 videos and immersive media. It’s also laying a foundation for taking the next steps required to move into the 3D worlds of VR and AR.

While this announcement is exciting news for 3D artists, it also signals a shift toward a more immersive online shopping experience for eCommerce.

What exactly are 3D Facebook posts?

The glTF 2.0 file format allows for 3D objects with textures, lighting and realistic rendering techniques. Basically, objects that are anything and everything from rough to shiny, metallic to soft, and beautifully detailed. Unlit workflows are also supported by 3D posts, allowing brands to publish photogrammetry and heavily stylized art.

New Graph API endpoints with 3D post support let developers build 3D sharing into any app, so users can share interactive objects or scenes directly to Facebook from their design programs. Using the new Open Graph tag, developers can also share 3D content from their website to their Facebook account or page.

Sharing 3D content to Facebook is easy – users with 3D authoring software can directly drag and drop their 3D files to Facebook to create a 3D posts.

Facebook showed off examples of 3D posts in its announcement:

https://www.facebook.com/LEGO/posts/10155489097298403

https://www.facebook.com/JurassicWorld/posts/1760208700690672

Facebook product manager Aykud Gönen said richer 3D posts opened the door for a “future where people can bring interesting objects and experiences with them across AR, VR, mobile and web.” This includes everything from game and movie characters to architectural models or museum artifacts, and even fully interactive scenes.

Why is Facebook supporting 3D posts?

This move is Facebook’s latest attempt to better align its VR efforts, uniting Facebook Spaces (a VR app that lets you “hang out” with friends in an interactive virtual environment) with its social platform.

But not just that. The company spent $2 billion in 2014 acquiring Oculus, the maker of Rift, a headset designed to immerse you in 3D games and other VR.

At the time, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said the technology opened up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences, and not just around gaming.

“After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court-side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home,” Zuckerberg said.

Last year at Oculus’ Connect conference, Zuckerberg announced an ambitious – not to mention aggressive – goal for his company’s VR growth: 1 billion users.

Shortly after, the number of listed job openings at Oculus nearly tripled.

Facebook has also partnered with the University of Washington’s Reality Lab. Based in Seattle, the home of Oculus Research, the $6 million venture is one of the world’s first academic centers dedicated to virtual and augmented reality. The move is a clear indication that Oculus – and Facebook – plans to take advantage of the lab as an incubator for future AR/VR research talent.

But back to 3D Facebook posts. While we know the end goal is immersive virtual reality experiences, Facebook product manager Aykud Gönen, who announced the new 3D file format support, to get there, the social giant would be working on supporting even higher quality 3D models, enabling interactive animations and bringing 3D content into the real world using AR.

What do 3D posts mean for marketers?

Online shopping can be disappointing. Sure, it’s convenient being able to buy anything you want with a click, but often the results don’t match your expectations, particularly when a product image is combined with just a few short sentences. Just last week, I bought a dress online that didn’t fit. I’m sending it back.

The potential for 3D eCommerce is massive. Everything from interactive 3D posts, such as what Facebook is providing, to augmented and virtual reality using wearable computers are only more potential channels for reaching consumers.

With 3D Facebook posts, retailers and marketers can provide a shopping experience that is somewhat closer to the physical in-store shopping experience – VR will be even closer.

3D posts will no doubt serve as a convenient way for Oculus developers to show off the cool things they’re making, allowing people who don’t have a headset to preview VR creations. But for marketers, this new post type opens up a world of possibilities.

As in the Lego example above, brands can now show off their products from every angle. Consumers can click and rotate. For now, at least until 3D Facebook posts become the norm, they will catch the attention of users who typically scroll past regular 2D ads in their news feed without a second thought.

For example, furniture store Wayfair shared a virtual entryway look, allowing people to check out their furniture items context before “shopping the look” on their online store. Users can click to rotate the furniture and see how the individual items sit together, and how they could potentially look in their own home.

https://www.facebook.com/wayfair/posts/1822787004410127

In another exciting example that shows off how clothing retailers could take advantage of 3D posts, Sony shared this interactive graphic of a purse scanned with a Sony phone.

https://www.facebook.com/sonymobile/posts/10156168691733390

With 3D eCommerce, retailers aren’t limited by real-world constraints, including the costs of running a bricks-and-mortar store.

As more and more consumers shop online rather than in physical stores and opt for a more authentic and enhanced digital shopping experience, retailers will have to change how they market and sell their products. While many businesses have embraced Facebook video and use advertising campaigns to boost their posts, 3D posts offer a richer user experience.

Awareness of 3D in eCommerce is still growing since it’s a relatively new concept, but brands thinking about how it will impact their business is slower than it probably should be given the potential impact it will have. Businesses that neglect to embrace 3D now that Facebook is supporting it will be left behind once their competitors move to using it.

It must be said, however, that creating a 3D post isn’t going to be easy for everyone, and certainly not something every business will want to do for every single post. The fact is, for most people, concepts like AR and VR are still futuristic ideas that are not part of their current reality and it will take time to get accustomed to 3D Facebook posts.

How to create 3D Facebook posts

Quigley says the hope is to keep the upload flow pretty simple and streamlined when sharing 3D Facebook posts so it doesn’t require high-tech skills. He calls glTF 2.0 “the JPEG of 3D,” adding the file format has support from Google and Microsoft.

To get started posting 3D objects to Facebook, you can either directly uploading a 3D file from your desktop, share a link from a website that supports 3D sharing to Facebook, or use an app that supports Facebook’s new API.

If you have a 3D model that’s not a gITF 2.0, Facebook has open-sourced converters on GitHub so you can convert them to Facebook’s preferred file type.

If you have an Xperia XZ1 phone, you can easily share 3D memories you capture via Sony’s 3D Creator app. 3D modeling software Modo has also added the ability to generate Facebook-ready files, with support coming to more 3D programs soon.

For those who are creating 3D models in VR, you can share a 3D model to Facebook directly from the Oculus Medium web gallery and soon from Google’s Poly.

Facebook has also recently launched animation tools for its Quill creativity software to bring scenes and objects to life. It’s entirely likely that these creations will also feature in News Feeds one day, alongside animations from other programs.

It’s not just Facebook that is aggressively pursuing 3D and other technologies. Google and Microsoft, along with startups like Sketchfab are racing to turn the web 3D. Depth-sensing phone cameras and VR software like Sony’s Xperia, Quill, Blocks and Tilt Brush are making it possible and easier for anyone to create 3D content.

Conclusion

While Facebook isn’t helping creators build 3D objects, it’s making it easier to import and share these objects. It’s also opening up its platforms for greater sharing of 3D graphics, and potentially AR and VR in future, as it works toward uniting its social and VR offerings.

Obviously, Facebook has a vested interest in pushing as much AR and VR-friendly material to its platform as possible. Encouraging more people to share 3D posts will make it more “normal” to see this kind of technology in your News Feed. The more you see 3D, and eventually more AR and VR, in your News Feed, the more like it is that you might want to buy an Oculus Rift for a fully immersive VR experience.

Moving forward, Quigley says Facebook is trying to make 3D a native part of the Facebook ecosystem, and “stage three is getting these 3D into AR.”

Facebook’s plan, for now at least, is to get more 3D objects into news feeds, encourage creators to share more 3D graphics and create immersive experiences, with Facebook at the center of this virtual – and not-so-virtual – reality.

The post 3D Facebook Posts: Everything a Marketer Needs to Know appeared first on Revive Social.

The background

My problem is this: we run a famous (my term), CodeinWP comics series which has a year’s worth of material and we’d like to draw attention to the archive. The comics are popular on social, so it stands to reason that people would be interested in seeing more.

I wanted to find a way to share links to the archive category page without needing to change the OG (Open Graph) tag with every image share. The question, then, is how to share a link on Facebook that gets reach while also presenting the images in their best light.

At some stage, Fearless Leader asked me why I wasn’t including the article links with every image share on social. As mentioned, I had strong opinions on links in captions which includes their negative impact on reach. I also think it harms the perception of the page which helps fuel a negative spiral of, even, lower reach and engagement. Cue an ongoing debate with gentle reminders that at its core social media is a fast paced environment and it can be hard to keep up with changes and their impact on content.

In the end, I decided to try sharing images with a link in the caption. Is it possible that the definitive answer to how to share a link on Facebook is actually misleading? If I share an image with a link in the caption will I see an improvement in reach?

The Hypothesis:

I think that sharing image posts with a link in the caption will have a lower reach than, cleaner, properly formatted photo posts.

How we’ll perform the test of Facebook reach

The problem with this test is that sharing the same image multiple times in a short time frame will have an adverse effect on reach. The best way to avoid this corruption is to use two pages of similar standing with an extended “rest” for the images. I have two outlets appropriate for distribution:

• ThemeIsle with 37,000+ likes and followers.
• CodeinWP with 32,000+ likes and followers.

I gathered the data over a few months of posting. I mixed the post types across the channels to ensure neither channel had a monopoly on either style. Where possible the posts were made with minimal changes to the copy and time schedule.

Here are the examples of the two post types; a standard image post on the right and a link in caption post on the left.

All of the posts were scheduled for posting from within Facebook with at least a week separating them. I started posting with links in the captions from the end of August.

Data and results

The averages were higher on both pages.

ThemeIsle Reach:

• Photo Posts: 1,103
• Link Post: 1,263
• Link posts had ~14% higher reach than standard photo posts.

CodeinWP Reach:

• Photo Posts: 1,263
• Link Posts: 1,422
• Link posts had ~11% higher reach than standard photo posts.

On both channels the posts with links in the caption outperformed standard photo posts which makes for an interesting result.

The whole test is about reach but how many clicks did we get? We only amassed 70 clicks which translates to roughly 5 per post.

Individual Posts

Let’s look deeper into the results and see what happened.

This was one of my favorite recent comics because it plays on a familiar problem with WordPress and it seemed destined to speak to people. As you can see, it got a reach of just 484 people with an engagement rate in the vicinity of ~1.4%. 1.4% is rarely a good statistic to quote. For anything.

The good news is that the post with a link in the caption performed closer to expectation.

This is closer to the reach and engagement I should see for this content. Reach was better by a multiple of ~3 and engagements were great with more than 7 times the engagement.

I also performed some experiments with the copy but it did not prove to be an equalizer. The link-in-caption post still outperformed its link free sister by some margin. The engagement rate for the link in caption post was more than double at 5%.

vs.

So I guess this means the job is done, the myth is busted, and Fearless Leader wins again? Well, not entirely. I did notice that the posts with links also attracted more negative feedback.

This was consistent across both channels with a total of 15 lower tier negative feedbacks. By lower order, I refer to “hide posts”. We weren’t reported and we did not have any unlikes. However, this was still ~3 times the amount of negative feedback received on no link posts. It also represents an average of ~1 negative feedback per post when the average post receives 5 link clicks.

So, how to share a link on Facebook?

We know that getting organic referral traffic from Facebook is difficult but if you want to know how to share a link on Facebook, then try adding links in captions. The data shows that this is actually a better option than an image share on its own.

Will I add this to my Facebook strategy in the future?

Yes, I will. I know the negative feedback seems to suggest it is a risky strategy but I feel the ratio is still in our favor. Link clicks, reach, and engagement all increase when a link is added in the caption. I think it can be safely added to the strategy without significant risk on our part. I also think that any risk can be mitigated with monitoring for the type of negative feedback and the total over a fixed period.

Myth status?

I am now quite confident that the answer to how to share a link on Facebook is to use the link-in-caption method. Obviously, the traffic you send back to your site will not be enough to fuel your business. Rather, any traffic you drive should be considered a bonus, rather than a brilliant strategy for growth hacking.

A final word on aesthetics, the posts themselves are not very clean. The value of the standard link post lies in the formatting and appearance of your shared links. It will be interesting to now compare link-in-caption to link posts. Look out for that one in the coming months!

If you have any suggestion or ideas you’d like me to test, then please drop a mention in the comments.

The post How to Share a Link on Facebook? #SocialMediaMyths appeared first on Revive Social.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of ways to get your target audience’s attention and spread your message. All you need are a few simple strategies, such as creating a variety of content types and publishing very short videos. By adopting a fresh approach, you can ensure that your Facebook marketing efforts remain just as viable in the coming year.

Why marketing on Facebook has become more difficult

When establishing a social media marketing strategy, it’s likely that Facebook will play a major role. This platform has long been regarded as one of the most powerful marketing tools out there and it is incredibly popular among businesses.

In fact, 93% of marketers use Facebook advertising regularly, and there are plenty of good reasons for that popularity. Facebook offers in-depth paid ads, for example, and highly-customizable targeting features. You’ll also gain access to a huge audience – 2.32 billion monthly active users, to be exact.

However, recent changes have made advertising on Facebook a little trickier than it used to be. Consider the algorithm Facebook uses to display content, for example. The platform is now putting an emphasis on the way users interact with other users, rather than how they engage with businesses.

While this can be considered a good thing in some respects, it may also mean that your ads are less likely to be seen. It also doesn’t help that Facebook has undergone a drastic decline in organic reach. This began around 2014, when Brian Boland, Facebook’s VP of Advertising Technology (at the time), reported that Facebook was managing much more ad content than it used to.

350 million photos and 55 million status updates are posted each day – and there are over 60 million active business pages. In short, there’s simply too much content being published on Facebook, and ad visibility is becoming increasingly competitive as a result. For this reason, it’s more vital than ever to find ways you can stand out.

Five Facebook marketing tips that still work in 2024

With the above in mind, it may be time to reconsider your approach. To help you get started, here are five Facebook marketing tips that are still highly effective, despite all the recent developments.

1. Vary the types of content you post

55% of marketers say that content creation is their top inbound marketing priority. However, it’s easy to get stuck in a holding pattern. Many marketers continuously use whatever techniques have worked in the past, even though this leaves little room for growth.

To keep your content marketing dynamic, the first of our Facebook marketing tips is to consider adopting the 70-20-10 approach:

• Publish original material 70 percent of the time.
• Share existing content that’s relevant to your audience’s interests 20 percent of the time.
• Create self-promotional content 10 percent of the time.

In addition, you’ll want to make sure that you include lots of different kinds of posts. Try using images, videos, GIFs, polls, and text in your Facebook material – and consider posting User-Generated Content (UGC) when possible too. The most successful brands typically publish 4–5 posts per day, including a variety of content and media types.

Studies have also shown that engagement rates drop significantly if a brand posts just once per day. Fortunately, using a social media management tool such as Revive Old Posts can help you automate your posting schedule, and share your blog content to Facebook easily.

2. Update your business page template

To get the most out of your Facebook page, it’s important that you’re operating from the right kind of business profile. It’s no longer enough to create a business account and start posting. You’ll also want to properly optimize your account.

Facebook actually offers a variety of templates for business pages. These templates include various features designed to help marketers showcase content in a way that aligns with their business goals. They will also automatically prioritize the most important information about your business.

For example, a charity page might focus heavily on a ‘donate’ button, or a link to an external fundraiser. There are numerous templates available for businesses, e-commerce stores, nonprofits, politicians, services, restaurants, venues, and more.

To take advantage of this option, simply visit the Page Settings tab of your Facebook business profile. There, you’ll be able to select the template that best fits your business’ needs – and fully customize it as well.

3. Create more video content – but keep it short

Video content is incredibly popular among online consumers. 75 million people in the U.S. watch online videos every day, and merely mentioning the word ‘video’ in an email’s subject line can improve its Click-Through Rate (CTR) by 13%.

So it’s no surprise that digital marketers are frequently prioritizing video content. However, in order to get the best results, it’s important to keep this content short and snappy. On Facebook, videos that run for less than 21 seconds are more likely to be completed. What’s more, nearly 50% of all videos are watched on mobile devices.

This suggests that people watch them while casually scrolling through their feeds during meals and breaks. They don’t have time to watch lengthy content, so they favor shorter videos. Plus, studies suggest that videos under 2 minutes long get the most engagement, so that’s a good guideline to aim for. No matter how long your video is, however, one of the best Facebook marketing tips is to place the most important information at the start.

In addition, remember to include captions in your marketing videos. Research carried out by Facebook found that adding subtitles increases view times by 12% on average. This has a lot to do with the fact that most Facebook videos are watched without sound. Therefore, your videos should be able to communicate your message without the need for audio.

4. Include Facebook Messenger in your strategy

Facebook Messenger can be an incredibly powerful feature, yet it is often under-utilized by businesses. This communication tool has a lot to offer – especially when combined with chatbot technology.

Chatbots are virtual assistants designed to communicate with your audience in a natural, conversational way. They can be programmed with information about your entire product catalog, and are a handy way to ramp up your customer service efforts.

A perfect example of this is the ASOS chatbot, Enki. Enki asks users several questions about their personal style, and instantly recommends clothing options based on their answers:

This is a great way to put your products directly into the hands of potential customers. It takes the hard work out of making a purchasing decision, and the fast response times are a great way to increase the likelihood of successful conversions.

In addition, the highly-tailored service they can provide makes chatbots incredibly popular among customers. In fact, 45.8% of consumers said that they would rather communicate with a business through a messaging app than email. Using chatbots is one of the Facebook marketing tips that can save your business the most money – up to £6 billion (almost $8 billion) per year.

Fortunately, chatbots are relatively easy to set up. There are numerous tools available that will get you started, including DigitalGenius and WhosOn. Your chatbot can be as complicated or as simple as you like – it all depends on how much information you wish to provide.

5. Take advantage of the new augmented reality tools

Facebook has recently implemented Augmented Reality (AR) tools for advertisers in Facebook News Feed ads. Users can now try on wearable products, such as glasses and makeup, within the ads in their news feeds. What’s more, they can do this without having to launch a separate application.

This isn’t just a useful option for fashion brands. For example, Kia enabled users to customize and personalize its KIA Stinger car within Facebook Messenger. There are numerous ways AR can be used to drive a creative, successful marketing campaign.

Crafting AR technology can be tricky, of course, so you may wish to source outside help. However, the benefits can far outweigh your initial investment. For instance, one ISACA survey found that 66% of shoppers believe the use of AR adds value to their shopping experience.

Using AR can even help you build a deeper connection with your audience, as you’re actively encouraging their participation. Users love to feel as though they’re involved with a brand, and may be more likely to convert as a result. Therefore, AR is a particularly viable strategy when you want to demonstrate how a product can fit into and improve your customers’ everyday lives.

Conclusion

In this post, we’ve explored five Facebook marketing tips that are likely to be highly effective in 2024:

1. Vary the kinds of content you post.
2. Update your business page template.
3. Create short and snappy video content.
4. Include a Facebook Messenger chatbot in your strategy.
5. Implement the new AR tools to create unique campaigns.

Do you have any more questions about the Facebook marketing tips we’ve discussed? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post 5 Facebook Marketing Tips That Still Work in 2022 appeared first on Revive Social.

In this guide, we will take a look at the pros and cons of Facebook Messenger ads, how they work, and the best practices to follow when running them.

Table of contents:

• What are Facebook Messenger ads?
• How to create a Facebook Messenger ad
• Best practices for click-to-messenger ads

The complete guide to #Facebook Messenger #ads

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What are Facebook Messenger ads?

Also known as click-to-messenger ads, these ads are Facebook posts that direct people to open a conversation in the Facebook Messenger app. You can also create click-to-messenger ads for Instagram or WhatsApp.

This is a great way to meet people where they are. Of Facebook’s 2.4 billion monthly active users ^[1], 98% of them are using Facebook on mobile ^[2]. And those users account for 94% of Facebook’s ad revenue ^[3]. If you want to reach people who are receptive to your ads, targeting app users is already a great strategy. Using Facebook Messenger ads to do it is an even better strategy.

These ads become even more impressive when you factor in the ability to create click-to-messenger ads for other apps in the Facebook family. After all, Instagram has one billion monthly users ^[4] and WhatsApp has two billion users ^[5]. In other words, if someone has a smartphone, they’re probably registered with at least one of these apps.

How to create a Facebook Messenger ad

The first thing to do is decide what app you want to build the ad for. This will determine where you place the ad:

• Ads that click to Facebook Messenger can be placed on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger itself
• Ads that open Instagram messaging can only be placed on Instagram
• Click-to-messenger ads directed to WhatsApp can be placed on Facebook and Instagram

Each of these platforms provides a different experience and appeals to different demographics, so you’ll want to tailor your ad content to the platform you’ve chosen. You also want to make sure that the ad fits with your overall marketing strategy for the platform in question.

The best practices for click-to-messenger ads are largely the same, but the technical experience of ad creation will differ based on the platform you’re using. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on how to make a click-to-messenger ad for placement on Facebook.

You can do this in a few simple steps:

1. Go to the Facebook Ads Manager

The “Promote” area of your Facebook business page is great, but to create a click-to-messenger ad, you’ll need to go to the Facebook Ads Manager. This is a specialized tool where you can view, manage, and create campaigns. You can reach this by going to https://facebook.com/ads/manager.

Click on the “Facebook Ads” link in the top bar. This will open a dropdown menu with a variety of action options. Select “Ads Manager”.

2. Select your objective

On the next page, click the green “Create” button.

This will open a box asking you to choose a campaign objective. Since we’re creating a click-to-messenger ad, I’m going to select “Messages”.

3. Name your campaign

Once you’ve selected an objective, you’ll be asked to name your campaign. You can also place the ad into an existing ad set (a group of ads that share certain characteristics).

This step is optional, but ad names and sets make it much easier to track multiple campaigns.

Click “Continue” to open the campaign editor.

4. Enter basic ad information

The campaign editor will open with one ad set and one new ad ready for customization. Click the “New Ad” link in the primary sidebar to reach the ad configuration page.

The first section of this page requires you to enter some basic information: the ad name, the Facebook page and/or Instagram account you want to place the ad on, and how you want the ad to display. You can choose to publish an ad with a single picture/video or a carousel ad.

5. Add the creative assets

The next section of the page lets you upload media and enter ad copy. You can also use the Video Creation Kit to turn existing images into a slideshow or video.

Next, you’ll be asked to enter a headline and select your call to action.

Click-to-messenger ads are automatically set to say “Send Message”, but Facebook also lets you choose the following calls to action:

• Shop now
• Sign up
• Apply now
• Book now
• Contact us
• Get quote
• Learn more

6. Create a message template

Further down the page, you’ll be asked to create an automated message to send to people who click on the ad. The Facebook ads manager has existing templates built for specific goals:

• Start conversations – This template lets you give people a set of prompts to tap on in order to start conversations with your business.
• Generate leads – This template lets you ask questions about your customers’ location, gender, email address, and more. You can also use this to automatically disqualify low-quality leads.

There’s also an “Advanced Setup” option, which lets you customize the chat using JSON code:

The template editor also lets you view what the chat will look like for the customer.

7. Enable tracking

The final thing you’ll need to do is enable tracking by connecting the ad to your Facebook Pixel. You can also add URL parameters.

8. Review and publish

Finally, review all of the information and settings you’ve entered to make sure everything is correct. The Facebook Ads Manager will also display a preview of the ad and let you know if there are any errors that will interfere with publishing the ad.

When you’re satisfied with all of these things, click the green “Publish” button at the bottom of the page.

Best practices for click-to-messenger ads

There are several strategies you can use to increase the effectiveness of your Facebook Messenger ads:

1. Write your headline to complement your call to action

Most types of content place the headline at the top. Ads in the Facebook feed, however, show the headline at the bottom, next to the call to action. You can see what this will look like in the placement preview area (see next image).

This means two things. First, your headline must be short. More than three or four words and your headline will get cut off partway.

Second, your headline should relate to your call to action. For example, if your goal is to start conversations and you choose the “contact us” call to action, you might use a headline like “Ask your questions now”.

2. Emphasize high-quality media

Facebook is primarily a visual medium, especially on Mobile. Some areas, like Facebook Stories, are entirely visual. They won’t display the text you write in the “Primary Text” area of the ad editor, and the headline will be displayed in small, hard-to-read text (see next image).

This makes it essential to publish only the highest quality images and videos with your ad. Take the time to plan every shot and choose clear, relevant imagery. If you need some guidance, check out our guides to social media graphic design and creating social media videos.

If you’re not confident in your graphics or video skills, consider outsourcing using a service like Fiverr.

3. Write concise, compelling copy

There’s no maximum length for Facebook ad copy, but any time you’re expecting people to read on their phones, you want to keep what they’re reading brief. Large blocks of text are unattractive and can be difficult to read on small screens.

This means you need to make your point fast. Limit yourself to 1-2 short sentences and focus on the benefit your business provides to customers.

You also want to note that the “Primary Text” will only be displayed in certain ad placements. Namely, the text will appear above your image in the Facebook feed. It will not appear in Facebook Stories or Search. If your text is absolutely essential to the viewers’ understanding of your ad, find a way to incorporate it into your visual media.

4. Create a journey

Most Facebook ads are simple: they funnel users to your website, eCommerce store, or newsletter. The rest of the customer journey happens away from Facebook.

Facebook Messenger ads, on the other hand, create a customer journey through the Messenger app.

You need to consider every step of this journey. Do you want the person contacting you to find out more about your brand? Do you want to find out more about potential customers? How can you make the experience welcoming to them while also emerging them in your brand style?

Use these tips to build a successful customer journey with your Facebook Messenger ad:

Last but certainly not least, understand your audience and focus your customer journey on their interests, needs, and desires.

5. Use Facebook Messenger ads in tandem with a Facebook chatbot

A Facebook chatbot is an automated system that responds to the messages people send your business when you’re not at your computer. You can also program them to appear when somebody first goes to your Facebook page, encouraging interaction from the get-go.

Facebook chatbots are essential marketing tools for two reasons. First, click-to-messenger ads only let you automate a small number of messages. When you connect a chatbot to your ad, you have the opportunity to give customers more options for interaction and longer customer journeys.

Second, a chatbot lets you automate customer service and marketing for people who message you from your Facebook page. Most people expect businesses to respond to social media messages within 24 hours. A chatbot makes it possible to do this without being tethered to your Messenger or hiring extensive customer service.

The good news is that you don’t need to understand code to build a Facebook chatbot. There are several companies that offer code-free chatbot builders. They are all just one Google search away.

Final thoughts

Facebook Messenger ads are an effective way to meet potential leads where they are and establish relationships with new customers. You can even adapt these ads for use as click-to-messenger campaigns for Instagram or WhatsApp.

How to create #Facebook Messenger ads: Beginner's guide

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To ensure the success of your campaign, remember to follow some best practices:

• Connect your headline to your call-to-action
• Emphasize high quality visuals
• Write concise, compelling ad copy; if the copy is essential to your ad, incorporate it in the pictures or video associated with your ad to ensure that it’s visible in all placements
• Create a customer journey within Messenger
• Use a chatbot to give customers more options for interaction

And, as always, remember to track your data so you can improve future campaigns.

How do you plan to use Facebook Messenger ads? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post Facebook Messenger Ads: A Beginner’s Guide for 2022 appeared first on Revive Social.

Facebook contests get people excited and engaged with your brand. Not to mention, you often don’t have to spend too much money to run a successful contest.

Table of contents:

• How does a Facebook contest work?
• Decide the style and prize for the Facebook contest
• Make the contest announcement and guidelines as specific as possible
• Decide how people sign up or make submissions to the contest
• Test the Facebook contest like a regular user
• Promote the Facebook contest
• Announce the winner and contact them

The complete guide to hosting a #Facebook contest that gets results

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How does a Facebook contest work?

Facebook doesn’t have an official app or feature to click on and start a contest right from your Business Page. Therefore, making a Facebook contest requires a bit of inventiveness on your end. Combine that with the many broadcast features from Facebook and you have a nice platform for announcing and moderating the contest.

To give a more specific answer, a Facebook contest works in one of the following ways:

• You announce contest details as a regular Facebook post or live video and include all the information for submissions/entries within that post. This requires more manual work on your part for logging submissions.
• You design a contest with a third-party contest app and use Facebook for the announcement, automating the entry collection process.
• You could also design a contest landing page with an entry form on your website and use Facebook to link to that page.

As you can see, Facebook serves as more of a communication module for contests, yet the first option could very well keep the majority of entries and communications on Facebook.

Now that we know how Facebook contests work, keep reading to learn all about how to decide on the style and prize for your contest.

Decide the style and prize for the Facebook contest

Every contest you run needs a style and a prize. By style, we mean the way in which the contest functions, with objectives and requirements. Some examples include:

A user-generated content contest where the participants submit their own videos, pictures, or another type of media.

A vote or survey to collect responses and have the “contest” between options you provide.

A response or caption contest, like where you post a photo and ask people to make the funniest caption.

Sweepstakes, where the user signs up and gains a chance to win.

Another form of user-generated creation contest, like building a table or writing a poem.

A scavenger hunt, where participants check items off a list and potentially send in photos.

An answer contest, where you post an image or question and ask for people to answer the question or locate something in the photo.

Next up, you want to figure out how those participants make their submissions. Much of this strategy involves the type of information you want to receive.

Examples include:

Entering a contest by liking or commenting on a Facebook post.

Filling in a form with the contact information like name and email address.

Actually submitting a piece of content, such as a video or a photo.

Tagging other people on Facebook or sharing it with followers.

Finally, your Facebook contest structure needs a prize. This part’s fun, but also tricky, considering you want to strike the right balance to ensure your prize matches the contest and you don’t end up spending too much money.

View our best practices and tips for choosing a Facebook contest prize:

• Find a prize that relates to your business and what your readers or customers actually want. An author awarding a collection of past books makes sense. Whereas a blog that caters to young nomads wouldn’t want to give away a Viking Cruise vacation (much older demographic).
• Consider the value of the prize in relation to your own expenses and whether someone would see it as worthwhile to sign up. A $10 shirt or mug probably won’t convince people to spend too much time on a video and publish it on your Facebook page, but asking for a Facebook comment may work for a cheaper item.
• Remember that incredibly generous prizes are often seen as scams or too good to be true.
• To create urgency, give away a smaller prize on the contest’s opening day. That way people don’t have to wait several weeks or months to see who wins.
• Try to avoid extremely popular items that anyone may want outside of your target demographic. An iPad, for example, makes sense for many industries, but you risk attracting all the people who scour the internet for contests and only want your iPad, not adding much value to your data collection efforts.
• Factor in timing and distribution based on prize size. For instance, you could give out a $25 prize to multiple people, or every day for one week. Yet a $5,000 prize would only make sense as the big-ticket item.

Make the contest announcement and guidelines as specific as possible

Contests turn confusing when they lack clear instructions. The last thing you want is to spend all your time clarifying the rules or figuring out if you should count submissions that didn’t follow the guidelines.

Get rid of both these problems by creating a simple, step-by-step list of instructions for the Facebook contest announcement. This way, people won’t ask as many questions, and you can simply disregard those who didn’t follow the rules (since you know the rules are clear).

Here’s what to include in your Facebook contest description:

• An intriguing call to action.
• A line about how to enter the contest (post a picture, write a comment, type your name and email into this form, etc.)
• Guidelines for contest submissions (take a picture next to a national park or make a comment that captions this photo).
• Additional social or data collection requirements (like having them follow your page or tag three of their friends).
• The start and end dates and times for the contest, along with when the winner gets announced.

Part of the contest details involves terms and conditions. These are very important to ensure no one messes with the rules or does anything illegal or compromising during their submission.

In general, we recommend making a Terms and Conditions page on your website and linking to that in the Facebook post, as terms and conditions are usually too long for a Facebook post.

Here are examples of things to cover in the terms and conditions:

• All the general contest rules for eligibility.
• Age requirements.
• Local requirements, if you only want people to win in a certain geographical area.
• An explanation about sponsors, or the lack of sponsors.
• A mention about how the contest is not endorsed by or administered by Facebook.
• Restrictions based on relationships with people in the organization.
• Restrictions on how many times someone can enter.
• Content restrictions, like people putting themselves in dangerous situations for photos or having curse words or other adult content in videos.

Decide how people sign up or make submissions to the contest

The simple route to collect contest entries is by asking for people to use built-in Facebook tools, such as comments, likes, shares, or by following your page. That way, you can manually go through all the comments or likes and identify the winner based on a random selection or a voting system (like if you had to choose the funniest photo caption from a list of comments from your users).

You may even consider utilizing some of the Facebook polling features to generate a flow of votes for a certain post, where all submissions get placed into a raffle.

Another option to collect submissions is by making a landing page with a form on your website. You could make a quick landing page in a content management system like WordPress, add a Google Form for submissions, and allow uploads for required submission items, like photos or videos.

On the other hand, various contest-building apps exist to make a fluid contest selection and management process between both your Facebook page and a website.

Some favorites include:

• Fastory – A mobile-first social experience tool for quickly making beautiful forms, contests, and games, all optimized for platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
• Wishpond – A social media contest builder with options for photo contests, coupons, referral contests, hashtag contests, and more.
• Heyo – A contest and sweepstakes builder with tools for constructing landing pages, forms, and social media posts, all from one dashboard.
• Rafflepress – A WordPress giveaway plugin for running contests and viral giveaways. This one primarily focuses on accumulating more follows and shares for your social pages.

Like we’ve said, sometimes it’s easier for small businesses to only ask for shares and likes. Sometimes it’s best to make a quick submission form on your website or to even log the submissions by hand. However, it’s worth looking into the more automated software for social contest management that’s built exactly for this purpose.

Test the Facebook contest like a regular user

Publishing a contest for the first time feels nerve-wracking, so we recommend easing those nerves by walking through the contest announcement and submission guidelines as if you were a customer yourself.

An even better option is to send the link, or a copy of the post, to a small group of friends and family. Ask them to write down any feedback about clarity, reasonableness, and potential improvements.

Promote the Facebook contest

Organic Facebook reach typically doesn’t have the strength you need to bring in more people to your contest. It’s a great idea to give your followers a sneak peek and first access to the contest, but at some point, it’s a solid plan to promote the contest on Facebook and other outlets.

We like to stick to Facebook advertising for these Facebook contests since you’re already on that platform, people don’t have to jump from one social network to another, and Facebook provides quick and intuitive ways to advertise the contest.

Your goal is simple: figure out your desired return on investment for that contest. Then, develop an advertisement that provides an enticing call to action and most information about the contest. Target those who may find your company or publication interesting, then run the ad through the entirety of your Facebook contest.

Even $20 to $100 per week has the potential to open the flood gates and prompt even more people to share all about your Facebook contest.

Announce the winner and contact them

No Facebook contest is complete without a grand announcement.

An announcement provides closure for those excited about winning, and it also gives you a chance to get your brand in front of all these new followers for one of the first times.

Finally, a winner announcement serves as a way to release information about even more contests in the future, or links to your other social sites, or links to your blog or store.

Essentially, that final post works similar to any marketing message.

Pro tip: Think about holding a sale, or giving out a discount coupon, to all contest participants. This makes people feel better about not winning and drives more traffic to your website.

When it’s done, start another Facebook contest with what you learned from the previous one!

The first Facebook contest is always the hardest, but once you figure out the contest style and prize, it all becomes much easier. Not to mention, you can use the original announcement template from before for all contests in the future.

How to host a #Facebook #contest: Beginner's guide

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After that, it’s important to test your contest, manage the entries with the tool of your choice, and promote through Facebook Ads.

Make sure you utilize analytics and tracking to understand the ROI of your contest. This way, you see if more contests are worthwhile for your brand, or if there’s anything you can tweak to make them better in the future.

Have you ever run a Facebook contest? Share your experience in the comments section!

The post How to Run a Facebook Contest and Get Great Results: Beginner’s Guide appeared first on Revive Social.

For some, the answer seems simple: as much as the budget allows. However, we encourage you to look deeper than that, since the goal is to avoid throwing money at an ad campaign that doesn’t render the desired results.

Every business is different, but with a good strategy, you can answer that looming question of how much should I spend on Facebook ads, allowing you to properly target users, run multiple ads at the same time, and utilize the right ad types without spending too much in the first place.

Table of contents:

• Decide what to spend on Facebook ads
• Start with a test budget
• Identify the best performing ads
• Reallocate budget expenses to superior ads
• Build a consistent budget and scale up

How much should you spend on #Facebook #ads? A comprehensive guide for small #business

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How much should I spend on Facebook ads?

One problem we often see with small business owners is that they create one Facebook ad, or boost a post, and hope it does well.

Metrics are checked in the Facebook Ads Manager, maybe a few changes go into place, and the next campaign usually follows the same practice.

When you ask the question of how much should I spend on Facebook ads, you should really be wondering about the best way to test out your ads and discover the ideal budget and strategy for your own business.

A large corporation is bound to spend in a different manner than a small retail shop. A clothing store should have a different budget than a technology store or a lawyer.

Therefore, we’ll walk you through the process of finding that perfect budget with the help of tools already in place on Facebook. Combine that with multiple ads running at the same time and detailed analysis, and you’ll find it much easier to answer that question.

Start with a test budget

All Facebook budgets should start with a test – nothing too expensive, but significant enough to accumulate worthwhile data that drives your future Facebook spending.

We’ll call this the test budget.

Test budgets are used to identify the best ad strategies, but they also produce failures. Therefore, it’s best to stick with a range of money from $100 to $500 for a full seven day week. Ideally, you’ll get closer to the $500 mark to produce the best results.

Why this number?

This initial investment is a requirement to eliminate wasteful spending in the future. Each ad type on Facebook has a minimum spend amount, which usually floats around $10 per ad.

The audience reach for a $10 ad varies, but here’s an example:

I’m planning on running several ads in my campaign to get more leads for a real estate business.

The advertisement will showcase a free paper on how to sell your house in the current market and get the best interest rate for a new mortgage.

At $10 per ad, the estimated reach for seven days is 119-343 people per day. Keep in mind that this estimated reach only factors in adults living in my area, so the targeting isn’t that complicated.

You also have the opportunity to go into detailed targeting, with elements like demographics, interests, and online behaviors. I’ll leave those off for my current test, but they’re rather valuable in the future.

Reaching a few hundred people each day isn’t nearly enough to start making decisions about the future of my spending. However, a $100 budget boosts that reach to 1K to 3K people per day.

A $500 weeklong budget generates an estimated reach of 4.2K to 12.1K per day. That’s more like it!

Now we’re looking at reasonable sample sizes to understand which ads people actually respond to.

Creating multiple sets of Facebook ads

So you’re saying I should spend $100 to $500 on one ad for the week?

Nope!

The test campaign, and all Facebook Ads campaigns, should have multiple ads running at the same time. This allows for comparison and the option to remove those that don’t perform as well. In addition, you may find some advantages to certain designs that you hadn’t thought of before.

We suggest beginning your test campaign with 5-10 ads – not completely different ads, but ones with minor changes, like a different call-to-action, alternate colors, or contrasting media types.

Let’s say you’d like to run an ad for a real estate open house. You can create the following ad variants without spending too much time at all:

Facebook Ads even provides an area for you to see recommended variants of the original ad you created.

This is just a small sampling of ad variants for one industry. Your job is to make a list of how you can change up your original ad to try out new tactics, even if it’s changing one simple line or adding a form at the end of the advertisement.

In the future, it’s recommended you expand this list to 10-30 ad sets per campaign. However, a test campaign with so many ad variants can become overwhelming.

Identify the best performing Facebooks ads

It’s time to evaluate the Facebook Ads results once that week comes to an end.

What matters most to your business right now?

Usually, the answer to this question is a return on investment, aka paying leads. So, you may find that an advertisement with high engagement doesn’t actually bring in any customers.

However, there are other things that might matter to your business as well:

• Leads
• Reach
• Brand awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement
• Installations
• Video views
• Messages
• Conversions
• Sales
• Store visits

Metrics to consider

The “return” in your return on investment varies based on the goals. However, we’ll assume that most brands are seeking out more leads or conversions.

After each ad runs for the entirety of a week you’re left with the results. Skipping the results and going right into your next batch of ads leaves you with minimal information, and it fails to answer the question “how much should I spend on Facebook ads?”

Although Facebook metrics look intimidating at first, they’re your best friend for analyzing the effectiveness of some ads and removing the ones that don’t turn out well.

What metrics should you focus on to figure out the quality of each ad? You have several options to choose from:

• Cost per lead
• Cost per conversion
• Return on investment

Although these metrics are slightly different, they all pretty much say the same thing: how much did it cost you for each lead, or conversion, or sale, or whatever it is you’re trying to gain? ROI, on the other hand, reveals the overall intake from those costs.

With Facebook, the cost per lead evaluation doesn’t take long. Simply open one of the ads to see its performance. Again, your cost per lead number depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

If a “lead” is considered a link click, take the overall spend and divide it by the number of clicks.

In the screenshot example that’s $120.32 spent/25 link clicks, or a cost of about $4.81 per click.

You may want to get more specific with your cost per lead by tracking users who click through to the site and purchase an item – usually done with the Facebook Pixel. Or maybe you’d like to collect email addresses. In that case, you’d divide the total amount spent by the number of email addresses collected.

In general, the cost per lead is a much stronger metric to consider as opposed to raw data like reach, video thru plays, or post engagement.

Reallocate budget expenses to superior ads

Now that you have your list of finished ads and their cost per lead metrics (for each separate ad,) take a look at the top contenders.

The goal is to pick the lowest cost per lead and formulate future ads based on what was done with that ad. If you ran 10 ads in the test campaign, consider keeping the four or five ads with the lowest cost per lead numbers. As you can see, it’s much easier to analyze results when you have a larger sample size. Although five ads is a good start, you’re only going to be able to see one or two top performers.

Consider the following example:

A list like this can be done within a matter of minutes by using the stats provided by Facebook. You can make it even easier by typing the information into an Excel spreadsheet to sort the ads from least expensive per lead to most expensive.

Continuing on with our test campaign, we have four ads out of ten with CPLs below $5. Those are the ones we want to save. Those are the ones to analyze and write down the elements that make them unique.

It’s clear that video slideshows have an effect on my lead generation. We’ll keep that in mind for the future. It also appears that mentioning the price, especially when there is a price reduction, results in more leads at a lower cost for my company.

Hammering down a consistent budget and scaling up

Keep in mind that the results from my own test may end up drastically different than yours, so don’t be discouraged if you keep getting a much higher cost per lead, since it all depends on your target market and the amount you’re willing to spend.

Having said that, the next step is to use this test information to solidify a budget going forward. This would include an ideal budget for each campaign and an estimated cost-per-lead.

For example, it appears that I have the potential to maintain a cost per lead at around $4 or $5, ideally lower. For now, that means I can estimate an intake of 20 leads for every $100 I spend on Facebook ads.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Does that mean you should spend $100 on all ads?

Not exactly.

The budget test simply provides a clearer view of how much you’ll end up spending so that there are fewer surprises and results that make sense.

You may have a budget for $500 per month in Facebook advertising. You now know that each month should pull in a certain number of leads for that budget.

From our example, that means we’re expecting 100 leads per month when sticking to a monthly budget of $500.

Don’t stop there

The objective is to make your Facebook Ads spending predictable and profitable. After that, it’s time to scale up your spending with advertisements you know produce specific results.

For instance, the example from before accumulates around 100 leads per month at a total of $500 for the entire month. If each of those leads brings $5 to your company you’ve hit the break-even point. However, there’s a better chance those leads are more valuable than that.

Essentially, some of the profits gained from those leads should go back into your advertising budget, allowing you to expand the budget and gain even more sales as the months go on.

How much should I spend on Facebook ads? Our conclusion

The question of how much should I spend on Facebook ads is answered with the following steps:

• Running a test Facebook Ads campaign.
• Making sure your sample size and spend are big enough.
• Adding multiple ad variants to the campaign to test which ones perform the best.
• Identifying the top ads using metrics like cost per lead and return on investment.
• Using the results to paint a clear picture of whether or not your estimated budget is realistic.
• Reinvesting the profits from your ads in more campaigns (while still using the same knowledge you gained from before).

Are you planning Facebook ads? Let us know about them in the comments section below!

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The post How Much Should I Spend on Facebook Ads? A Guide for Small Business appeared first on Revive Social.

Groups enable your business to engage directly with devoted fans, and your fans to communicate with each other. This presents a unique opportunity to build a ‘captive audience’ of qualified prospects who are eager to hear from you. Plus, group activity directly increases your organic reach, thanks to Facebook’s algorithms.

In this article, we’ll explain what Facebook groups are and why they can be beneficial to your business. Then we’ll provide some best practices so you can get the most out of yours. Let’s dive in!

Table of contents:

• An introduction to Facebook Groups
• How Facebook Groups can benefit your business
• 6 tips to build a tribe using a Facebook Group for business

How to build a tribe using a #Facebook group for #business: Proven #marketing tips

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An introduction to Facebook groups

Most people are probably casually familiar with Facebook groups – they exist for nearly everything you can imagine, from homeowners’ pages to special-interest and support groups. They’re essentially like mini-networks within the larger Facebook universe:

Groups usually focus on a single topic of interest, whether that’s a band, an industry, a product, or a business. Members can communicate with each other and share information, tips, and tricks related to the topic. For example, you might have a group for hang gliding, where members discuss equipment and their favorite take-off points.

There are three types of Facebook groups: public, private and visible, and private and hidden. Here’s how each works:

• Public: Public groups are, well, public. Anyone on Facebook can see the group, and – more importantly – anyone can join it. You don’t necessarily want that when creating a group for your business.
• Private and visible: These groups are visible to non-members (for example, they show up in searches). However, they can’t be joined, viewed, or otherwise accessed unless you’re a member of the group. Non-members who want to join must request access, and an administrator then has to approve the request. Only approved members can post.
• Private and hidden: These groups are completely invisible – they don’t even show up in searches. As such, they’re invitation-only. Non-members won’t even know they exist unless you advertise the group.

In general, you want to go with a private but visible group for a general business community, and a hidden group for special purposes (like creating a group for a course). We’ll touch on this more below.

How Facebook groups can benefit your business

Despite what your younger friends may say, the amount of time people spend on Facebook continues to increase – and that was before everyone got cooped up at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Facebook also claims that groups saw a significant increase in user engagement in 2020. We see no reason this trend won’t continue, particularly as many areas around the world go back into lockdown.

That means there are a lot of people interested in and using Facebook Groups. More importantly, they’re pre-qualified prospects. People in a Facebook Group for a business are very likely to have a deep interest in that business, niche, or industry – and they want to talk about it. In other words, they’re some of your biggest fans, and they’re open to what you’re selling (if you do it right).

A Facebook Group also gives you a direct line to those fans. Not only can you potentially sell to them, but you can also keep an eye on trends and opinions about your business and products, straight from the community that’s using them. This kind of information is invaluable for improving customer relationships and building better products that your audience wants to buy, and no other social network enables you to create such a group.

Finally, an active Facebook Group for your business also increases your organic reach across the entire social network. This is because Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes “posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions.”

That includes posts from groups – just scroll through your News Feed and take note of how many posts are from groups. What this means in practice is that you aren’t just getting the benefits of engagement within your Facebook Group, but you’re also increasing brand awareness outside the group at the same time.

• Running a WordPress site? You can use Revive Old Posts to automatically share posts to your Facebook Groups. Learn more here.

Tips to build a tribe using a Facebook group for business

Now that you know why you should be leveraging a Facebook group to build your tribe, let’s take a look at how. These six tips should get you off to a running start.

1. Be clear about the rules for your business’ Facebook group

First, and perhaps most importantly, it’s vital to set some clear ground rules for conduct and content in the group. After all, this is the internet – with no rules in place, the quality of content can suffer, and conversations can quickly devolve into name-calling (or worse). Clear rules can help keep things civil and productive:

Besides a code of conduct, it can also be helpful to put guidelines in place for the types of content you want to see posted. A common rule in many groups is a limit (or outright ban) on self-promotion. Unless your group is explicitly intended for users to promote their work, these types of posts can really clog up your group and lower the quality of conversations.

2. Remember that your group is not about you

It’s important to remember what your group is all about: giving fans of your brand a space to discuss your products and related topics. While being able to sell additional items to these users is one of the reasons you likely started the group, that should never be the main focus. Instead, you’ll want to give the users a safe place to build a community. If you gather people to the group and then start immediately hitting them with sales propositions, you’re likely to quickly scare them all off.

In a similar vein, be sure to give the group some space. You don’t need to insert yourself, or a company spokesperson, into every conversation. While you do want to be active and accessible, there’s a balance to strike between being present and smothering.

3. Make the Facebook group for your business private

People love exclusivity. A private group feels like a special, secret space – a members-only club. People may be more likely to join and engage if they feel like they’re part of a special community:

Additionally, while it may seem counter-intuitive, you probably don’t want just anyone joining the group. Public groups can rapidly fill up with bots, trolls, and users who aren’t necessarily truly interested in your brand. Requiring approval to join ensures that your group is focused on your target audience. This may result in a smaller group, but the members will be better-qualified and more likely to engage (and purchase).

Now that you know you want a private group, you have a choice: private and visible or private and hidden. Which you opt for depends on the nature of the group. If you’re running a general-purpose group for your brand, visible is probably best. Hidden groups should generally be reserved for very specific purposes – such as communities based around courses you teach.

4. Use a questionnaire to filter out bots and trolls

Speaking of bots and trolls, just requiring admin approval to join a group isn’t always enough to discourage them. This is especially true if your group gets a lot of applications, and the administrators simply approve them all by default:

Your questionnaire doesn’t have to be complicated, or even more than a couple of questions. Just requiring an answer to a question is usually enough to determine if applicants are humans or bots. Questionnaires and application forms can be set up when creating your group.

5. Provide exclusive content for your Facebook group

To further capitalize on the exclusivity of your group, it’s a good idea to provide content that only members have access to. There are endless possibilities here, but the idea is to give group members a reason to keep coming back and engaging.

Examples of exclusive content you could use include:

• Q&A events with founders or key people in the company
• Product training videos
• Invitations to special events
• Contests and giveaways

Whatever you offer, avoid the temptation to cross-post it to other platforms or locations on the internet. Instead, it’s smart to keep it in the group for maximum impact.

6. Make sure you have enough administrators for the group

If you follow the above suggestions, the Facebook group for your business should start to grow. As it does, it’s critical to ensure that you have enough administrators who are up to the task of maintaining it. This can be a big job: as a group grows, discussions grow with it, and members inevitably clash, toe the line on rules, or just place large demands on the attention of the company.

Dedicated admins and moderators can help keep things from getting out of hand, ensure that questions are answered promptly and professionally, and keep the conversation flowing in the group. In other words, don’t try to tackle everything by yourself!

Conclusion

If you’re struggling to make headway with Facebook marketing, or you want a central place where your most loyal customers can gather to discuss your products and services, Facebook groups are an excellent solution.

Start a new #marketing campaign with #Facebook groups: Proven tips for increased #engagement

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Simply follow these six tips to start building your tribe and getting more from Facebook:

1. Be clear about rules to keep troublemakers out.
2. Remember that your group is not about you – it’s about your audience!
3. Make your group private to add authority and exclusivity.
4. Use a questionnaire to filter out bots and trolls.
5. Provide exclusive content to keep members engaged.
6. Make sure you have enough administrators to keep the group running smoothly.

Do you have exciting plans for using Facebook groups for your business? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Build a Tribe Using a Facebook Group for Business appeared first on Revive Social.

The good news is that Facebook supplies marketers with tools to get the most out of the platform. You can use these tools alongside some simple strategies to quickly reach out to – and be remembered by – your intended audience.

In this article, we’ll explore how Facebook can help grow a company’s brand awareness. Next, we’ll discuss some specific strategies, and talk about how to achieve them. Let’s get started!

4 ways to use #Facebook to boost awareness of your #brand

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How Facebook lets companies establish and grow their brand awareness

For the uninitiated, Facebook offers various forms of ads (such as video, image, and carousel ads) and they can all be used for the purpose of growing brand awareness.

Facebook’s ad formats, along with its advertising objectives, can be useful for marketers. Combined, they can let you estimate the effectiveness of a brand awareness campaign before launch.

Of course, Facebook has an immense reach – 2.5 billion users at current writing. This offers access to a wide demographic of people, segmented by age, location, interests, and more to deliver highly targeted advertisements.

For example, businesses such as OSHEE have used these advertising techniques to drive brand awareness. The company saw an 11 percent uplift in ad recall after running video ads on Facebook. There are also numerous case studies that can be read involving prominent companies achieving similar or better results.

In one study, the Malaysian bank RHB was able to generate brand awareness by advertising on the platform. The campaign reached 5.3 million people. It also led to a 7-point lift in ad recall, and a 4-point lift in intent on people becoming a customer.

Four ways to boost brand awareness on Facebook

Using Facebook to help people remember your brand does not need to be complicated, especially when the benefits are clear. Here are four ways you can leverage the platform’s tools to reach out to your ideal audience.

1. Use targeted ads to increase visibility

Simply put, targeted ads let companies display advertisements to Facebook users. Ads can be shown on various parts of the site, such as the news feed, right-hand toolbar, among other areas – and they’re always marked as “Sponsored:”

Facebook’s advertising algorithm works under the hood to help display the correct ads to users. However, there are a number of customization options to enable to further refine the target market. For example, ads can be shown based on the user’s location, demographics, interests, and connections.

Targeted ads are great for when you need to select specific audience segments based on user behavior. For example, you could show ads based on users’ prior purchases, or a specific target device (among other criteria.)

There are other ways to target users. The Facebook Pixel is valuable for targeting those who have already visited a site containing it, while more traditional facets such as pulling from contact lists are still worthwhile.

Through audience segmentation, targeted ads can have an advantage over traditional forms of media. In a study by Adlucent, it was found that 71 percent of consumers prefer personalized ads, which is claimed to result in a higher Click-Through Rate (CTR) for advertisers, and a lower wasted ad spend. For consumers, they were more receptive to the ads, which led to higher conversions.

To create targeted ads on Facebook, you’ll use the Ads Manager tool:

To access it, head to the Facebook for Business Ads Manager landing page, then click the Go to Ads Manager button.

To begin the process of designing an ad, click the green Create button. You’ll then be presented with the options of starting a complete campaign or creating a shell so that you can fill in the details later.

Next, you’ll be asked to choose your marketing objective that can fall under an Awareness, Consideration, or Conversion category. Then you’ll name your campaign, at which point you can enable two features:

1. A/B testing to trial creative, placement, audience, and delivery options
2. The Campaign Budget Optimization tool to improve the efficiency of your ad spend.

On the next page, you’ll continue to fill out details about your campaign, such as selecting a name and traffic source, before moving on to defining your ad placements. You can choose between automatic placements, or a manual approach to target Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger users.

The next step is to define your budget and advertising schedule. Here you can regulate your average cost per click, set a daily or lifetime budget, and define when you’d like to run your ads, either continuously or between a start and end date.

In the final section, you’ll begin the process of designing the ad itself. You’ll choose which Facebook page you’d like to use to represent your business. Next, you can choose the media, text, and links that will be included in your advertisement. Selecting your language translation and tracking options are the last steps to take before finalizing your campaign.

2. Respond to reviews to strengthen your reputation

If you have a Facebook business page, you can let customers leave ratings and reviews (now called recommendations) of your company. You’ll also be able to respond with a comment:

It’s important to respond to reviews as it shows you’re responsible when handling customer feedback, be it positive or negative. Additionally, a study conducted by Harvard Business Review found that responding to customers can lead to more positive reviews in the future.

Replying to feedback has the additional benefit of encouraging more people to leave reviews on your Facebook page over time, especially if you follow some best practices.

For positive reviews, thank the user for their feedback and paraphrase what they said to show you’ve listened. It’s also worthwhile to include your business name and a few relevant keywords in your response if appropriate. This will help the review rank in search engines, where it may be helpful for others.

The next two steps help to leverage the positive feedback you received. You can mention a new feature or promotion of the product you are offering that the customer might not be aware of. Then you can invite the customer to act by doing something like viewing a related product or service.

In contrast, the first step in handling a negative review is to first show concern and empathy for the customer. This lets them know you’re taking their feedback seriously, and are willing to help resolve the dispute. Next, if your page is weighted with positive reviews, you can point to the good feedback you’re already getting as a testament to this negative review being a one-off.

Once you’ve done all you can do through Facebook, the next step is to move the conversation to a more private medium such as telephone or email. This will speed up the process of resolving the customer’s problem, while also protecting the reputation of your brand from a public dispute.

3. Include hashtags to improve your content’s reach

Hashtags on Facebook work the same as on other social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram – you preface a word using the Pound or Hash symbol (#). It will then show up in relevant Facebook searches to other users.

There’s no limit to the number of hashtags you can add to posts, so you should look to add as many as are relevant (although we’ll discuss the optimal number later.)

Facebook processes billions of searches per day, so hashtags are going to be valuable for increasing the reach of your content to users. Of course, there’s also the added chance of receiving additional likes to your Facebook page once a user hits your content.

Given the power yet simplicity of hashtags, let’s quickly summarize two best practices for using them in your Facebook posts:

• Use an optimal number of hashtags. Research has shown that one hashtag is the optimal number to use, with a drop-off in user engagement the higher this number goes.
• Hashtag your main keyword. It also pays to hashtag the main keyword of your content so that your post will be more visible to users when they search for content on Facebook.

Overall, hashtags can help get new eyes on your brand, and because they’re so straightforward, they’re a frontline tactic for generating awareness.

4. Use a call to action (CTA) to inspire engagement

If you’re unsure what we mean by a CTA, it essentially asks a user to do something actionable, such as leave a comment or visit your store. CTAs are common across many genres and niches and stretch across emails, videos, and offline marketing.

In short, CTAs work. They’re a useful tool for driving conversions and increasing engagement. Furthermore, a study by the company MarketingProfs revealed that posts containing the word “share” receive substantially more likes, shares, and comments compared to posts without the word.

As you’d expect, higher engagement means an increase in the likelihood of posts showing up in a user’s news feed. This is due to how Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm works for prioritizing content, and will hopefully expose your brand and content to additional people.

As for how to put this into practice, simply asking your audience to engage with your post is often enough for people to take action. If you’d like to further expand your reach you could add an additional element to your CTA asking for readers to share content or “Spread the word!”

Another tactic you can implement is to include a strong benefit statement. For example, you could include “Listen to our latest podcast on Spotify and get a 20% discount on your next purchase.”

You can also experiment with adding a sense of urgency to your CTAs, which can inspire people to act quickly. It can be as simple as “Click the link and get 40% off when you order today!”

Finally, using coupon codes along with a CTA may also be an effective means of improving your engagement and conversions. You’ll often see many variations of “Enter code PROMO20 to save $20 when you shop at our online store” – it’s a tried and tested way to get people clicking.

Conclusion

Using Facebook for marketing purposes can be frustrating if you’re not sure how to capitalize on it.

Fortunately, there are some proven strategies you can experiment with to rapidly reach your audience and make a lasting impression.

Learn how to use #Facebook to build awareness for your #brand in 4 simple steps

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In this article, we covered four ways you can boost your brand awareness using Facebook.

1. Use targeted ads to showcase your brand to a specific audience.
2. Respond to every review your business receives.
3. Include hashtags on each post you publish.
4. Include a CTA in your posts to encourage sharing.

The post 4 Simple Strategies to Boost Brand Awareness on Facebook appeared first on Revive Social.

This means exploring how other brands in your industry utilize Facebook Ads to improve business and gain followers.

You don’t have to copy the competition, but this gives you a quality look into the type of content that gets noticed. Not only that, but you’re able to eliminate ineffective post types from your social plan.

How to research your #FacebookAds competition to improve your advertising campaigns

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The benefits of researching your Facebook Ads competition

Why can’t you just go with your heart and develop content that’s related to your brand?

The problem is that social media planning and development, just like anything, takes time. Sometimes you have to spend a decent amount of money, and there’s nothing worse than creating a beautiful video, photo, or infographic only to find that no one cares for it.

So, read below to understand exactly why researching your Facebook Ads competition is so beneficial.

• There are excellent tools to locate brands just like yours.
• You’ll get ideas for Facebook ads that you never would have thought about before.
• You’ll stumble upon the failed ads that you should avoid, ultimately saving your time and money before committing to similar campaigns.
• This is a way to mimic full social campaigns, not just one ad.
• Discover what types of traffic come in from their ads.
• You get to find out what links are being used and what their redirect pages look like. For instance, you can take pointers on landing pages.
• This serves as a measurement tool prior to investing in your own ads. Facebook quantifies everything.

How to look into your Facebook Ads competition for inspiration

Not all Facebook research is efficient, so it’s essential to figure out the best option for your brand. For instance, you may discover that some of the competitors you follow aren’t that great at creating Facebook Ads. Therefore, our first strategy below won’t be all that effective if that’s the case.

Having said that, we’ll cover a handful of options for spying on your competition for you to decide on the best content for your ads.

Start by looking at the Business Pages of your competition

This is the simplest of research strategies, but it may end up being tedious and time-consuming depending on your situation and industry.

However, don’t underestimate the power of going straight to Facebook Business Pages.

The process uses the Facebook Ad Library, as listed in the point below. Yet, with this method, we’re targeting a particular business from the start.

Here’s how:

Go to a competitor’s Facebook Business page. For this example, I’m going to Dollar Shave Club’s page.

Ads posted by your competitor aren’t shown directly in the regular Facebook Business page feed. Therefore, you have to find the Page Transparency module.

Click on the See More link.

This reveals a popup window.

Go down to the area called Ads From This Page. Click on the Go To Ad Library link.

Now we can see all of the past and active ads running from one company, as seen below:

Dollar Shave Club is a wonderful example of how Facebook Ads are supposed to be developed and managed.

You can immediately see that Dollar Shave Club has hundreds of ads running at the same time – something that many small businesses don’t do.

However, spending less money on each hyper-targeted ad is a far more effective approach than piling most of your cash into one ad that targets a larger group of people.

This is one example of what you might learn from your Facebook ads competition!

Other than that, it’s best to view more information about each ad. Click on the See Ad Details for this.

All ads are different, but three elements stand out in this one:

• Dollar Shave Club actually has five versions of this ad, with minor tweaks to each one. This could help with targeting and finding the right wording. Facebook dynamically delivers different ads based on the situation.
• The call-to-action link goes to a highly-optimized landing page about the product being highlighted.
• The vast majority of Dollar Shave Club ads are short videos.

Use the goldmine that is the Facebook Ad Library

The point above already brings you to the Facebook Ad Library, but that process is more for honing in on one company, then checking on the ads currently running.

However, a full library is provided for you to examine entire industries, with filters for finding the perfect comparisons for your company.

Begin the search by going to the Facebook Ads Library.

A search bar is available for you to type in any keyword. Consider keywords that relate to your industry, like competitor names, or things like “real estate” or “adventure outfitters.”

The main search bar is for all ads, but you also have the option to only look for political or housing ads. The reason these are separated is because there are extremely specialized rules for politics and real estate.

Most businesses will start with the All Ads search. So, let’s pretend I run an online store for plus size clothing. When I type in “plus size clothing,” brands that relate to that keyword appear as suggestions.

Click on the More Results By Page link to see even more options that relate to your keyword. If these companies don’t seem like actual competitors, try an alternative keyword until you find some.

After you select a company to research, Facebook uncovers all ads from that business page.

Use the filters to focus on ads that have been posted over the past few days. Some of the other filters are great for showing ads based on platform and country.

For example, you can filter to see ads that are only showing on Instagram or Facebook Messenger.

The library is also nice because it tells you which platforms all of the ads are currently running on. This brand utilizes all of the options: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger.

Overall, the Facebook Ad Library doesn’t provide any analytical information.

However, you can still see which types of companies are running lots of ads. Does this mean they are effective? No. But they at least have experience.

Not only that, but viewing the ad details is an excellent way to find content ideas for your ads.

Case in point, the Kiyonna Clothing company has an impressive collection of ads going simultaneously.

I picked a random ad and found that it’s a slideshow gallery of clothing for brides, like engagement party dresses.

Another ad has a 15-second video to showcase a Valentine’s Day Special. Sure enough, the “$50 Off A $150” purchase text is highlighted, with nothing else cluttering that message.

Looking into other industries shows how different advertising methods are used for other customers.

Many of the adventure outfitting companies I examined have playful videos of people being active outside.

I searched for real estate agents in Illinois and found that open houses are often advertised on Facebook. This makes a lot of sense, since Facebook lets you target users in that area who are currently looking for homes.

Ask Facebook why you see certain ads on your feed

Another way to understand how competitors target their ads is to ask Facebook why you’re being targeted in the first place.

To do this, scroll through your personal Facebook feed to find any ads. A quick way to get competitor ads in your feed is to follow their pages.

Once you locate an ad that’s from your competitor – or from a company that’s like your competitors – click on the “…” button in the upper right-hand corner of the ad.

A menu appears. Click on the item that reads “Why Am I Seeing This Ad?”

This gives you a wonderful look into how some of your competitors are targeting their customers. Sometimes it doesn’t reveal much information, but other times it’s a good start for how you should approach users on Facebook.

The previous ad targeted writers, so that makes sense for me. Under that additional information panel I can see that the ad focuses on people who have shown interest in Freelance Writing Jobs.

You’ll also find details on age ranges, locations, and languages.

The following is another ad that showed up on my feed. It’s for a car-sharing company. I’ve done quite a bit of travel, so that’s probably why it showed up on my feed.

This one is a bit different, seeing as how it doesn’t show the ad to people over 45. So, if you were in this industry, it may show you that other companies have decided that people over 45 have minimal interest in sharing their cars.

Consider third-party tools to analyze ad traffic sources and campaign effectiveness

The tips mentioned above are great for establishing what types of content are used by your competition.

But do you have any idea if this content is actually effective? Unfortunately, not directly through Facebook.

The only way to see results is to scan through your personal Facebook Feed, since those sponsored posts have likes and comments for everyone to view.

So, how do you evaluate ad campaigns from competitors?

A third-party social analytics tool is required.

Here are some options to consider:

• Buzzsumo
• SpyFu
• Ahrefs
• SimilarWeb

As an example, Buzzsumo provides several tools for checking on competitors, such as the Facebook Analyzer. This is great for benchmarking against other companies. It also pairs with the content checker for seeing where social shares are coming from and how many are occurring.

Ahrefs has similar features for researching your competitors and monitoring a particular niche. It also explores keywords, content, and your own site to figure out what you’re doing wrong and how you can compete with what other companies share on Facebook.

SpyFu is even more relevant for researching about ads, since it cracks into several unique areas that your competitors are doing well with.

There’s a spot to paste in your competitor’s URL. It then presents all of the brand’s ads on social media and Google. Information like clicks and cost are shown, with keyword suggestions for these advertisements as well.

SimilarWeb is one of our favorites for tapping into areas like search data and social referrals.

As seen in the screenshot, SimilarWeb displays where REI gets most of its social traffic. It turns out that only about 2% of its website traffic comes from social media.

However, Reddit is the top traffic source! Facebook is also high up there, but I never would have assumed that people are finding information about REI on Reddit.

There are plenty of other features for you to consider for all of these tools. Some of them (SimilarWeb in particular) have free features for you to play around with. After that, you may end up paying. For instance, Ahrefs is a very expensive product that smaller companies should most likely stray away from.

Overall, Facebook collects quite a bit of data on users. That’s why companies have such an easy time with targeting. However, it takes some research on your end to maximize the efficiency of your own Facebook Ads campaigns.

Now it’s time to implement what you’ve learned from your Facebook Ads competition

From spying on your competitors through their own Facebook pages to integrating with more advanced social analytics tools, there are plenty of options for you to learn about your Facebook Ads competition.

Use the data and observational information as your content guide.

Build an informed #marketing strategy by studying your #FacebookAds competition

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Heck, you may discover that one or two companies are perfect examples of how you should be approaching Facebook Ads. You could potentially devise your entire content strategy off of one similar company.

The post How to Research Your Facebook Ads Competition to Improve Your Advertising Campaigns appeared first on Revive Social.

In this post, we’ll explain what Facebook audiences are and why identifying yours is important.

Then we’ll provide you with four helpful tips you can use for creating and targeting them. Let’s get started!

How to identify and target your #Facebook #audience (4 key strategies)

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An introduction to Facebook audiences

With over two billion active daily users across the globe, Facebook is a platform packed with marketing opportunities. Perhaps this is why more than 87 percent of marketers in the U.S. alone plan to use it as a marketing tool in 2020.

Facebook ad campaigns can help you:

• Expand your reach
• Build brand awareness
• Increase sales

According to research, the average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month. This is a lot, and speaks to online shoppers’ affinity for pursuing promotions on the social platform. However, they’re not going to click on irrelevant ads. This is why identifying your Facebook audiences is a critical step in your social media marketing efforts.

Put simply, a Facebook audience is your target market. It refers to the users who are most likely to be interested in your offerings and, ultimately, lead to a conversion.

Facebook offers a wide range of tools to help you create more effective ad campaigns, one of those being the Audience Manager tool. With this, you can save audiences and create new ones.

The three main types of Facebook audiences are:

• Saved Audiences. These are audiences you can define based on peoples’ demographics, interests, income level, devices used, etc.
• Custom Audiences. This category of users can be incredibly valuable because you can retarget past customers and site visitors. You can create a Custom Audience based on website traffic, customer files, and engagement data.
• Lookalike Audiences. These are the people you can target based on the similarities they have with existing customers.

Creating Custom Audiences is one of the most valuable ways to target consumers. It lets you create highly defined groups of people who have already shown an interest in your brand, content, or offerings.

How to identify and target your Facebook audience (4 key tips)

Next, let’s see how you can find your own audience and use them for successful ad targeting. Let’s take a look at four key tips you can use for creating and using Facebook audiences.

1. Use Facebook Audience Insights to collect user data and build a customer persona

Facebook Audience Insights is a free tool that lets you gain a plethora of meaningful insights to improve your ad campaigns. Moreover, you can use it to learn about the people currently connected to (or engaging with) your Facebook page.

Audience Insights also makes it easier to create a customer persona or ‘user profile.’ You can identify common similarities between users, then use this information build targeted ads. The more familiar you are with your customer persona, the easier it will be to create highly specific audiences.

You can locate the Audience Insights section under your Facebook Ads Manager page. In the top-left corner, click on the hamburger icon. Then, under the Plan section, click on Audience Insights:

A pop-up window will appear presenting you with two options for analyzing an audience: Everyone on Facebook or People connected to your Page. If your Facebook page is relatively new, you may want to choose the first. It will then bring you to the Audience Insights page:

Here, you can view a wide range of data on Facebook users. This includes age, gender, and location. You can also select the Advanced option to gain even deeper insights:

This includes everything from relationship status and language to occupation and education. You can also use this page to filter by Page Likes to uncover more user interests.

You can also save an audience based on these insights:

Simply click on Save at the top of the page, name the audience, then click on the Save button at the bottom.

2. Create a custom audience based on your website’s traffic

Another way you can create and target a Facebook audience is by retargeting your website visitors. The people who have visited your website already show an interest in your products. So, it makes sense to incorporate them into your Facebook audience and campaigns as well.

The easiest and most effective way of going about this is to add a Facebook Pixel to your website. This is a unique snippet of code that lets Facebook track your site data, including visitor behavior.

You can then use this information to optimize your audience and ads. For example, you can target Facebook ads toward consumers who abandoned their shopping cart on your site.

Facebook Pixel tracks ‘events’ that are based on visitor actions. There are a handful of standard events you can track, such as Add to Cart. You can also create custom events and build custom audiences for anything not covered by the standard events.

Once you’ve installed the Pixel on your website, you can create a custom audience based on the traffic. To do this, go to your Ads Manager page, click on the hamburger icon, then under Assets, select Audience. This will bring you to the Audience Manager page.

After you click on Create a Custom Audience, a window will open providing a number of sources to choose from. Click on Website:

Next, you can configure the settings for your custom audience:

You can target:

• All visitors
• People who visited specific pages
• Visitors by time spent

When you’ve established the parameters, name the audience, then click on the Create Audience button. If the custom audience has at least 1,000 people, you can create a targeted ad for them.

3. Build a Facebook audience using your email or customer list

Your website traffic isn’t the only source you can use to create and target custom audiences. You can also use data from existing customer files, which might include emails, phone numbers, and addresses. Facebook uses the customer profile data to match it with Facebook profiles.

This is a recommended route if you’re an established business but are still somewhat new to Facebook advertising. It can help you bridge the gap between past, existing, and potential customers.

To do this, go to the Audience page of your Facebook Ads Manager, then click on Create Audience → Custom Audience. In the window that opens, select Customer list:

Next, it will explain the requirements for preparing your customer list:

You can choose at least one identifier (such as email). Each identifier should have its own column in your customer list and be appropriately named. If you’re a Mailchimp user, you can import a list from there.

To upload your own, select the Next button. Agree to the terms, then click the Next button again.

It will bring you to the page where you can upload your own customer list:

Note: It must be either a .CSV or .TXT file. After you upload and name the list, click on the Next button. It will bring you to a preview page so you can review the data mapping to ensure that it’s appropriately categorized:

When you’re done, select Upload and Create. The custom audience will then be automatically added to your Audiences list.

4. Experiment with a Facebook lookalike audience

Once you’ve spent some time creating new custom Facebook audiences and are comfortable using them for targeted campaigns, you can expand your reach by experimenting with Lookalike Audiences. As you might recall, these refer to groups you can target based on similarities they share with your existing customers and audiences.

You can create a lookalike audience that uses your existing defined custom audience and extends it to incorporate various other metrics. For example, you could build a Lookalike Audience that includes the same interests as a saved audience, only in another region or country.

To create a Lookalike Audience, go to your Audiences page and click on Create Audience → Lookalike Audience. In the panel that opens, you can fill in the details to create your Lookalike Audience:

First, choose a ‘lookalike’ source. This can be an existing or saved audience or you can create a new one. Next, you can choose a new location to target as well as an audience size. The higher the size percentage, the broader the search will be. When you’re done, click on the Create Audience button.

Conclusion

Facebook is one of the most frequented websites on the planet, making it a goldmine for advertisers. However, to make the most of your advertising campaigns, it’s essential to make sure you’re targeting the users most likely to convert. On Facebook, these groups are referred to as ‘audiences’.

Essential strategies for discovering and targeting your ideal #audience on #Facebook

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In this post, we covered four key tips you can use to identify and target your Facebook audience:

1. Use Facebook Audience Insights to gather data and build a customer persona.
2. Create a custom audience based on your website visitors.
3. Build a Facebook audience using your email or customer list.
4. Experiment with a Facebook Lookalike Audience.

Do you have any questions about uncovering and targeting your Facebook audience? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Identify and Target Your Facebook Audience (4 Key Strategies) appeared first on Revive Social.

This makes things much easier for small businesses, who might not have time to do a lot of demographic research on their own.

If you’re thinking about taking a dive into the Facebook world, or would like to improve how you promote your local businesses on Facebook, keep reading to see real-world examples that you can mimic.

Common traps to avoid when promoting local businesses on Facebook

Local businesses on Facebook have a tendency to get stuck in some traps that eventually lead to a lack of productivity and a dwindling community. In terms of shareable content, it’s wise to consistently test out different formats, media types, and ideas, but it’s also important to stay away from the traps that don’t add value and don’t do much to make your brand stand out as a friend of consumers.

What are these traps?

Worrying about follower counts

In my experience, local businesses on Facebook have follower counts ranging from staggering to underwhelming. Some have 5,000 with a steady growth rate, while others have 500 and shouldn’t expect that number to increase much.

However, the total follower count means nothing if you fail to build community and add value to that community. Facebook typically only shows your posts to people who have shown a tendency towards engagement. When your content primarily focuses on selling products or posting unoriginal, third-party articles (see below,) it’s not uncommon for posts to see 10 likes and one share from a whopping 5,000 followers.

On the other hand, I’ve seen incredible engagement from lower follower counts, making the time investment in Facebook worthwhile. Murphy’s Red Hots in Chicago has a little over 800 followers. This may sound like a lot to some or a little to others. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how Murphy’s connects with those followers.

Murphy’s makes it a habit to share pictures and videos of what’s going on in the neighborhood, in the hot dog shop, and whenever the restaurant is mentioned in the news. It sees impressive engagement for most of these posts, especially the ones where they get creative:

Not testing what engages people on Facebook

From third-party articles to “throwback Thursday images, and playful videos to new product graphics, the options for Facebook posts range in both style and effectiveness.

Global brands obviously have more resources to test the waters, whereas a local business owner might get frustrated after seeing poor social responses for months. It’s essential to remain nimble and utilize the wide range of post formats available to you. Are you sharing third-party articles or promotional graphics only to see a limited response?

Make it a point to test a new type of post every week, then mark down the ones that users seem to enjoy.

People Play Games is a used video and board game store. Facebook posts in the past varied from quick promotional text posts to random articles about gaming.

As time passed, and the owner went through some social testing, it became clear that video game customers enjoyed amateur photos (going along with the used video game theme,) with personalized words from the owner about how some games were found.

The likes, shares, and comments have only improved, and it’s all due to one person walking around every day and snapping simple photos of the merchandise.

Sharing unoriginal, irrelevant content

Pictures and videos do well on Facebook, but there seems to be a trend where small businesses are more willing to grab articles from other sources or take a meme and try to make it somewhat relevant to the business.

Articles and memes are easy to acquire and share, yet in my experience, they waste your time.

Think of the used game store highlighted above. The store owner eventually learned that posting third-party articles was less entertaining than a photo of the shop. Furthermore, snapping a daily photo with an iPhone is less work on his end.

Yes, premade content is ready for the taking, but is that what customers want to see from local businesses on Facebook?

Gyms are notorious for posting inspirational memes, third-party articles for health and diets, and essentially forgetting how many in-house resources they have for making creative Facebook posts.

The Chicago Athletic Club’s Facebook page struggles with some of these generic posts, but a simple picture of people enjoying wine outside the gym is enough to get the followers talking a bit.

Forgetting the main reason users go on Facebook

If you have experience with Facebook, you may have noticed that posting a beautiful graphic about your upcoming sale, or a new product, fails to get the same response as a fun video you took showcasing your employees.

Why is this the case?

Let’s think about the main reason people go on Facebook in the first place.

Is it to…

1. Learn about the latest news from a brand?
2. Make a purchase?
3. Interact with friends?

When you think like an actual Facebook user, this question becomes a no-brainer. Most people haven’t even thought about going on Facebook for #1 or #2.

So where does this leave you when trying to promote your local business on Facebook? After all, you can’t turn your brand into a real person to hang out with like a friend.

But…you can turn your brand into a community member. People are willing to become “friends” with organizations that put people first, including both employees and customers.

The Two Hearted Queen coffee shop in Chicago has yet to reach the 1,000 follower mark on Facebook. However, the company has become a neighborhood favorite and social success.

Why?

First of all, it’s a unique coffee shop with a cozy environment. Secondly, the followers absolutely love the owners.

They’re the faces you see when grabbing your coffee before work, and the people who smile and ask you for refills as you relax with friends on the store’s patio. In addition, the owners aren’t afraid to show their faces, or their stories, on Facebook, developing a further connection with the people in the neighborhood.

Excellent methods for promoting local businesses on Facebook (with real-world examples)

Once you get past the common mistakes you may have been making on Facebook, it becomes easier to see why some local businesses are successful with Facebook and some are still confused.

We can even put together some rules:

1. Forget about how many followers you have. Focus on building a small community.
2. Try a new style of post every week or month.
3. Cut it out with the third-party articles and memes.
4. Ask yourself, “How can we become friends with our followers?”

Friendly videos instead of written or graphics-based ads

With your rules in hand, and some knowledge about which pitfalls to avoid, you can now move onto the exciting task of making your local business relevant and intriguing to follow. First off, we have the idea of focusing on friendly videos instead of the sometimes useful (but far more boring) written and graphic-based posts.

For instance, Toons Bar and Grill offers Cajun-style food and drinks, along with a shuffleboard and Kansas City Chiefs events. That’s quite a bit of material to get creative with on Facebook.

Although it’s necessary to talk about weekly deals, some of the Facebook promotions fall flat. The one below, for example, reads more like an advertisement than anything, with the Toons branding plastered on an image and the meme-style “mmmozzarella.” The text certainly isn’t unfriendly, but it’s nothing that gets the community excited like they would with a real friend.

But Toons excels with its videos, often showcasing the bar being packed and rooting for the Chiefs. Toons is also known for its crawfish boils, and the visual prep behind it was captured in a video to get people excited.

The video received quite a few likes, comments, and shares, along with over 3,000 views. That’s not bad for a local bar. What’s the secret sauce behinds the video’s success? After all, it’s a short simple clip with no dialogue involved.

Well, crawfish are rather unique, and people love them. The massive amount of crawfish in the video shows that Toons is prepping to serve the entire community. In addition, you get a taste of what the workers are up to and how the preparation takes place.

Pro Tip: For an even deeper connection with your fans, consider using Facebook Live.

Talk about what locals are talking about

Whether it’s a snowstorm or a new business moving in, your job on social media is to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on in your town. This might involve events as well, but for this point, we’re talking more about everyday conversation. Think local politics and weather, new developments and even if someone down the street got a new dog (this probably won’t matter as much in a big city).

Hayes True Value in Ohio sells items like shovels, sleds, and ice melt. So, when winter storm warnings hit the TV screens, this business knows it’s time to capitalize.

Hayes True Value knows that a boring graphic about shovels won’t do the trick. It’s far more effective to share and laugh about the misery with the locals by posting pictures of cars covered in snow and even more snow piled ten feet high on a street.

Incorporate what excites the world (in a creative way)

What truly excites almost everyone when they go on the internet? I can think of a couple big ones right off the bat: sports and animals doing funny things. Many other topics get the entire world talking, like music and pop culture. However, you might want to avoid global politics for this one.

Hartville Hardware, another hardware store in Ohio, does a wonderful job of capitalizing on sports. The company sells Ohio State branded merchandise and takes to Facebook to put a spin on sales with creative sports-based media.

The one below doesn’t get much of a response, but that’s because it’s more of a generic advertisement with that big “40% off” on it.

However, Hartville Hardware gets a big A+ for its videos. The best part about these videos is that they usually only last 30 seconds, so any small business can make the time.

As many people sat down to embrace the Olympics, Hartville Hardware took out the Roomba Vacuum and some mops to advertise its floor care products in alignment with the Olympic event of curling. Pretty genius if you ask me.

As mentioned before, animals doing funny things always gets a laugh, so that’s why this hardware store frequently features the owner’s dog to hire people.

With 72 shares on Facebook, that’s far better than posting a Help Wanted sign outside the store.

Pro Tip: If you notice a post doing particularly well, consider boosting it.

Don’t forget, you’re part of the community, too!

We mentioned the power of conversation in the community, but it’s easy to forget that people are also interested in the development of your business. A new wood burning stove in a restaurant is big news–as is a shift in location or a partnership with a local charity.

Corridor Brewery & Provisions works hard to take photos of the behind-the-scenes action and people enjoying the food and beers. However, I particularly admired this post of a gigantic fermenter sitting outside the brewery’s front window.

What may seem like a boring piece of equipment actually improves the experience of coming to that establishment for the customer. Not only that, but it raises questions like “Where’s it gonna go?” and “When’s it going to be ready?” When local businesses on Facebook look like they belong in the community, that’s when they start to gain traction.

You can achieve something similar by creating your own behind-the-scenes Facebook videos.

What are people up to this weekend?

Seasons and holidays can play well into your promotions, and I’ve seen it done well with local businesses where they bring in Santa Claus, hold Oktoberfest events, or make something special for a local sports team.

One of my favorite posts from local businesses on Facebook is from the First Ascent Rock Climbing Gym, which hoisted Santa up to the top of a climbing wall and allowed people to climb up there with him. The promotions went well on Facebook, as did the large gallery of pictures documenting the weekend.

If your business regularly hosts events, you can also leverage the fear of missing out to catch people’s attention.

Go back in time

As a bonus piece of inspiration for promoting local businesses on Facebook, think about the age of your company. There must be photos from the past, even if it’s only a year old!

Uncle Dan’s Outfitters has been around since 1972, and the offerings inside the store (along with the location) have changed dramatically.

As mentioned, a new local business can take advantage of one or two-year-old pictures as well. It’s a charming way to mention an anniversary and show how things have changed.

Promoting local businesses on Facebook: Are you ready?

Hopefully, these tips and examples allow you to sit back for a second and consider what types of posts are right for your Facebook audience. Location matters, demographics matter, and the style of your business matters for creating the right tone needed for a successful local Facebook strategy.

Do you have questions about promoting local businesses on Facebook? Ask them in the comments section below!

The post How to Promote Local Businesses on Facebook (Real-World Examples Inside) appeared first on Revive Social.

We’ll talk about the most important parts of the customer persona as we walk through the process, but it’s essentially an outline of your average customer. We like to include the following elements in our customer personas:

• Personal information and demographics – Jobs, income, gender, family life, etc.
• Goals and wants – What are they striving for in life? What makes them happy?
• Why you? – What’s the reason your customer buys from your company? What problems are you solving? Also, is there a reason some people don’t purchase from you?
• Form of contact – What’s the best way to reach your customers? Facebook Ads? Email marketing? Social media posts? Mobile or desktop?

Why should your business create customer personas?

A profile of your users or customers serves as a way for you to connect better and actually know about your customers instead of using your gut.

Here are some of the advantages of having a well-researched customer persona:

• You’re able to find out what customers are interested in.
• You learn their pain points.
• It might become clear that you’re communicating to them in the wrong places or formats.
• It provides a better idea as to what types of new products should be developed.
• You begin to understand what type of content is desired on things like blog posts and email newsletters.
• Demographic information will be revealed for better target marketing.
• You may even find out that you’ve been targeting the wrong people all along.

How do you figure out a customer persona

As highlighted in this article on finding your social media audience, there are a few groups you need to research and some different means of completing that research.

First off, we’re interested in making a customer persona for the following:

• Your entire current customer base.
• All potential customers.

Both are equally important, and the information we need can be found with the following:

• Analytics
• Surveys
• Individual conversations

This type of customer persona building typically starts by looking at your analytics. This way, you’re working with hard data and not just potentially skewed answers from surveys and chats with customers. That’s why we’re only focusing on analytics in this article! More specifically, Facebook Insights and Audiences.

What are the blanks you need to fill in for a customer persona?

Not all of these are possible to obtain through analytics, but many of them are. The following items should be included for your customer persona:

• Age
• Gender
• Relationships and family status
• Location
• Their income bracket
• Shopping habits
• Ethnicity
• Profession
• Hobbies
• Political and religious values

You’ll find that some items, like income bracket, can’t be used when marketing in the real estate industry (it’s considered a form of discrimination). Therefore, it becomes more difficult to obtain data like this through analytics from Facebook. However, that’s when you turn to other methods of building customer personas.

Finding a customer persona on Facebook Insights

Luckily for businesses, Facebook profiles include much of the information needed to layout a customer persona.

We all know the drill. You create a Facebook profile, fill in your interests, and type in some of your personal information like your birthday and siblings.

Facebook uses some of these details for advertising purposes, meaning that companies can target based on anything from location to hobbies.

Let’s walk through the process of obtaining this information and putting it into the customer persona for your business.

Step 1: Find audience insights on Facebook

It’s easy to get confused in the Facebook Ads area, and this is one of those times we need to make a clarification.

Facebook Audience and Audience Insights are two different sections of the dashboard. We’ll use both, but it’s important to begin with the Audiences tab.

This area compiles information for advertising purposes.

To find the Audiences page, go to your Facebook account, then open the Ads Manager page.

Click on the drop-down button in the upper left-hand corner.

Choose Audiences under Assets.

Don’t confuse this with Audience Insights. We’ll go to that page later.

Step 2: Make a custom audience in Facebook

After that, you’ll see a few options for finding the users that matter most to your business.

You’ll start with the first two for building your audiences. The last step is simply saving your audiences.

As a brief explanation: You begin by creating a custom audience. This might be based on your email list, Facebook page, or website visits. After that, you generate a “Lookalike” audience, which is not the same, but comparable, and taken from a certain percentage of the area. 

Click on the Create Custom Audience button.

The next page asks you how you would like to create the custom audience. Facebook has been getting much better with targeting, so importing your own current business information is the best way to get accurate audiences.

Some of my favorite audience sources include:

• Customer list file
• Website traffic
• Instagram profiles
• Facebook profiles
• Lead forms

You can select multiple sources, but for this tutorial, I’ll be choosing one of my Facebook pages for simplicity.

The next page looks different depending on what audience source you chose from the previous step.

For this tutorial, you can see that it wants to know my Facebook page.

Select the page of your choice, along with your criteria. For instance, you could simply create an audience based on page engagement over the past year.

After that, name your audience and click on the Create Audience button.

Now, Facebook reveals a list of your audiences. I only have one right now, but you could save dozens of them to reuse and speed up your advertising and research process. If you’d like to view or update an audience, click on its name.

Note: Some audiences are so small that not much information will be pulled for them. Some startups and smaller companies might have limited data from their Facebook pages. The full size of your population could take up to 72 hours to populate. However, most of the time it’s faster.

Step 3: Create a Lookalike audience

We’ve generated the custom audience. Now, click on the Create Audience tab and choose Lookalike Audience.

As briefly touched on before, a Lookalike audience is one that’s similar to your custom audience, but with different parts of the population. This allows you to create multiple Lookalikes and potentially tweak them based on different metrics.

Use the dropdown to find your Lookalike source. I located the custom audience I previously created. You also have options to choose other pages and sources.

Go down the page to select your audience location. For this test, I’m using the United States.

Finally, you can make your own audience size. I tested out two audiences for this tutorial. The more you move the slider to the right, the broader an audience it becomes. Therefore, I made one audience at 1% of the United States and another at 1% to 10% of the population.

When you’re done with that, click on the Create Audience button.

Keep in mind: Facebook recommends more valuable ways to collect information for audiences. For instance, you can use your Facebook Pixel or even product information to get detailed audiences with lifetime customer values. Facebook calls this the “Value-based Sources” and they work rather well if you have the right data sources.

Step 4: View results in Audience Insights

Now it’s time to check the results of our Lookalike audiences. Go to the dropdown module at the top. Open the menu and click on the Audience Insights button.

If you don’t see any of your information, go to the Open button to locate the proper Lookalike audience. Remember, it may take some time to populate your audiences.

With your Lookalike audience imported, Facebook shows break downs like Demographics–men, women, and relationship status.

Note: All of these graph screenshots have mock data in them. 

Click on the Page Likes tab to see what types of pages your Lookalike customers are checking out. You can even get the relevance of each brand page to break down exactly where the majority of your customers shop.

The Location tab is also important for identifying all of the cities, countries, and languages from your mock audience.

Finally, the Activity tab works great to see if your customer base has a tendency to make comments, like posts, and redeem promotions.

Is the sample too small? Make an audience to the best of your ability

You often don’t get results from Audience Insights if you’re just starting your company or your Facebook follower count isn’t that high.

So, how do you build a customer persona in order to make sound marketing decisions?

Skip the custom audience and go straight to the Audience Insights tool.

For instance, let’s say you want to start learning more about the customers of your fitness drink store. You have an online store and a physical shop. You lack a high enough follower count, but you still want to tinker with making a customer persona.

Start by completing the following:

• Add the advertising location.
• Choose the desired age to target.
• Select gender.

Here’s where it gets interesting. What would you like to find out?

The sky is the limit, but for my experiment, I know that fake bodybuilders currently love my fake sports drinks. So, I want to see what else is common amongst their community.

I typed in “bodybuilding” in the Interests field.

The tool takes a moment to process the information, but whenever you choose a metric the graphs should change.

This was a very basic way of digging into customer profiles, but let’s see what we learned about people who like bodybuilding:

• They like following supplement brands on Facebook.
• Planet Fitness is one of the most liked pages by this group.
• Their favorite spirit is Patron Tequila.
• Many live in large cities like Chicago, New York, and Miami.
• 67% of this group only uses mobile for browsing online (probably always at the gym).
• There are actually more women than men on Facebook who have bodybuilding as an interest (at 55% for women).

You can definitely make your own conclusions, but these are some things that I’ve decided to ask myself from this information:

• Should we partner with a supplement brand?
• Maybe contact Planet Fitness for a partnership?
• Shall we open a store near a Planet Fitness?
• It seems like marketing should focus on bigger cities and only mobile-friendly ads.
• Is it time to start making my marketing less masculine? Or just target more towards women?

Make your customer persona

Building that ideal customer requires you to take this information found and interpret it into your customer persona.

You’ll encounter many situations where you’re still left to guess, but try to stick to your research and Lookalike data.

A great method for shaping your customer persona can be found here. It outlines essentials like employment, titles, relationship status, and more.

I also want to add to that process, seeing as how Facebook provides us with interests and information on how to reach customers.

Here’s a mock outline of our suggested customer persona:

• Personal information – This area includes everything from gender to income. You can also list jobs, family, and age.
• What your customers desire – What kind of problems do your customers face? What are their goals? How can you help them solve problems and reach goals?
• Why your customers buy your products – Under this header you would write down the reason people buy your products, along with reasons some people might not buy your products.
• How can you reach your customers? – This goes into elements like location, interests, and browser types. You may find that your customers all shop through mobile phones, so maybe it’s better to contact them through an app or SMS.

Most of these metrics can be found in the Audience Insights area of Facebook. You can search for particular interests, or go into the Advanced section for languages in your Lookalike audience, or maybe their professions, education, or relationship status.

What next?

Facebook would be your first place to advertise since the data actually comes from there. But you also have the opportunity to use this information for a better understanding of your customers overall.

For instance, you might find that many of your customers are married with kids. Does this change your marketing wording, colors, or outlets?

It’s the little things in your customer personas that open up new opportunities for your brand.

If you have any questions about making a customer persona on Facebook, let us know in the comments below.

The post How to Use Facebook to Create a Customer Persona and Build More Effective Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Revive Social.

An introduction to Facebook Workplace

You probably know Facebook as ‘just’ a social media platform. Workplace, on the other hand, is a platform built with companies in mind (although not the same as regular business pages!).

Surprisingly, Facebook Workplace has been around since 2015. We say “surprising” because, despite its parent’s popularity, Workplace is not as popular as some of its competitors. However, it does boast a nice roster of big-name clients, including Chevron, Heineken, Spotify, and Starbucks.

In numbers, more than 30,000 organizations use Facebook Workplace. It boasts around two million paying users, although they don’t disclose how big its user base is in total.

As for features, Workplace includes all the big hits you’d expect. It offers multiple communication channels including messaging, video calls, regular posts, and more. You can also use Workplace to store and share files, configure work notifications, and myriad other tasks.

Finally, it’s important to note that Workplace integrates with over 50 third-party collaboration services. This means you can use it alongside all your team favorites, including (but not limited to) Google Drive, Trello, and Dropbox.

Key Features:

• Set up a unique Workplace for our organization.
• Create individual sub-groups for smaller teams.
• Store and share files.
• Contact anyone on your organization using multiple communication channels.
• Manage your company’s news feed and set up notifications.
• Categorize posts using a taxonomy system.
• Integrate your Workplace with dozens of third-party services.

If you’re looking to try Workplace out risk-free, there’s a free version offering most of the features we’ve discussed so far. In practice, Workplace could be a great option if your team is on a budget.

However, if you want access to more advanced functionality, such as the Workplace API and some specific integrations (such as with the G Suite), you’ll need to pay $3 per member per month. However, Facebook does offer the premium tier completely free to non-profit organizations.

Three ways using Facebook Workplace can benefit your business

There are, of course, plenty of cool options available when it comes to online collaboration tools. However, at their core, many share much of the same functionality. With this in mind, let’s focus on what sets Facebook Workplace aside.

1. It enables you to streamline communications

Online chats, regular calls, and video conferences to communicate with your team are commonplace. Workplace knows this and as such, makes each channel simple to use. At any point, you have quick access to your Chats tab, and you can hop in and out of calls rapidly.

You can also communicate directly with specific team members or entire groups. The call quality is pretty decent in our opinion, even if you don’t have the best connection.

Overall, Workplace is a great option if you don’t have an internal communications system set up for your workplace yet. It’s even better if part of your team is remote since it removes the need for physical meetings.

2. You get access to a business news feed and upcoming events calendar

If you’re part of a Facebook group, you’ll know one of the things that makes it feel close-knit is its main feed. The interaction rates directly correlate with how active the feed is, and high numbers cultivate more of the same.

The same applies to Workplace – the larger your team is, the more activity there will naturally be in your feeds. It gives everyone the perfect opportunity to communicate and engage with people they might not otherwise converse with.

In most cases, your General and group feeds won’t be all about work, which is okay. The more fun discussions there are in public, the more encouraged your team might feel to join in and stay active on Workplace beyond scheduled chats and calls.

Moreover, Workplace also provides you with a built-in calendar. You can use it as your company’s central hub to keep members informed about upcoming events and take advantage of notifications to send automatic reminders.

3. It integrates with plenty of other collaboration tools

There’s no single online work collaboration tool that can do everything. However, Workplace excels in a few specific areas, including:

• Streamlining communication within your company.
• Enabling you to create team and project-specific groups.
• Keeping everyone in the loop about what’s going on.
• Uploading and storing files.
• Scheduling events.

Those are all important features, but for almost any type of modern company, you’ll need to use other services to complement Workplace. For example, take using an online platform that enables you to submit and sign documents online. You might use an online survey tool to collect employee data, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service, and more.

However, you may end up constantly jumping from one platform to the next. This is what makes integrations that enable you to share data between platforms so useful.

Out of the box, Workplace integrates with over 50 third-party services, which you can browse within their directory:

Every integration works differently but in short, connecting other platforms to Workplace enables you to review data without having to jump back and forth. Think of it like a WordPress plugin or the If This Then That (IFTTT) application. In addition, Workplace offers its own API that enables you to develop integrations of your own, although this is only available for premium users.

How Facebook Workplace works

Signing up for Facebook Workplace is simple – enter your email in the field on the Workplace home page, and you’ll receive an email confirmation message. It will contain a code, and once this is entered into the authentication field, you’ll be able to access your new Workplace:

As you can see, the style is very reminiscent of Facebook itself. In fact, the entire suite of basic functionality should feel very familiar if you’ve used Facebook before. Take messaging, for example – you can take a look at the current open conversations by clicking on the Chats tab at the bottom of the screen:

Right now, the tab is empty, so we’d need to invite some of our team members. To do so, click on the ‘three-dots’ button at the top of your dashboard and select the Add Members option:

You can now send an invitation to anyone you want using their email, and once there are more people inside your Workplace, you can start using some of the more fun features such as voice and video calls by clicking on the respective menu items.

Voice and video calls in Workplace are very flexible – beginning one means anyone within your group can join in:

If you want more private communications, you can create additional sub-groups beyond the default General option. To do this, open your Workplace sidebar and look for the Create Group option.

Workplace enables you to create several types of groups. You have project channels, company-wide discussions, announcements, social chats, and even cross-company groups:

Once you select what type of group you want to set up, choose a name and define whether it’s open, private, or secret:

You can have as many groups as you want, so feel free to be as specific as possible. For each, you can upload files that won’t be available to other chats using a simple uploader:

On top of the features we’ve discussed so far, you’re also able to schedule company activities over from the Events tab. This looks similar to the social media events manager – fill in a few basic details and even configure recurring activities:

Once you set an event, it’ll show up in the Upcoming and Calendar tabs. If someone subscribes to an event, they’ll get notifications as reminders and can even share events to specific Workplace chats.

The features we’ve covered so far are part of Workplace’s free tier. They’re pretty straightforward, but their value really begins to rise based on how big your Workplace team becomes. Using groups, in particular, can bring in a lot of organization to teams.

All in all, Facebook Workplace is an office-wide intranet that uses Facebook’s data centers and functionality to make your life easier. The base tier doesn’t offer any bleeding-edge functionality, but it’s more than good enough for small businesses.

Conclusion

Moreover, Facebook Workplace has the advantage of the ecosystem of its parent company. Pretty much everyone has a Facebook account and knows how to use the platform. This means getting your team up to speed on how to use Workplace should be remarkably simple.

Do you have any questions about how to use Facebook Workplace? Ask away in the comments section below!

The post Facebook Workplace: How it Works + How It Can Benefit Your Business appeared first on Revive Social.

However, organic reach has been dropping for years, and took a massive hit when Facebook’s News Feed algorithm changed in 2018. In response, some marketers have turned to Facebook advertising and others have stopped marketing on Facebook altogether.

The best WordPress Facebook plugins make it easy to maintain a regular content schedule on Facebook and encourage interaction on your Facebook page without doing an enormous amount of work. This allows you to maintain a presence on Facebook while focusing the majority of your efforts on other social media platforms.

The best WordPress Facebook plugins

1. Custom Facebook Feed

Custom Facebook Feed gives you the ability to display Facebook feeds directly on your WordPress website. You can display the feed of any public Facebook page or even display multiple feeds on one site.

Custom Facebook Feed’s default settings configure the feed to match your existing website aesthetic, but you can also fully customize how feeds appear on your site.

Features

• 1-Minute setup
• Multi-feed display with ability to display the feed from any public Facebook page
• Responsive, mobile-friendly display
• Complete aesthetic customization
• Content displayed is crawlable by search engines, boosting existing SEO efforts
• Ability to add custom CSS
• Set custom caching frequency to ensure that posts load “lightning fast”
• Show and/or hide certain parts of Facebook posts
• Supports Facebook tags – Creates links to profiles or pages when you use the “@” symbol to tag people in posts
• Customize the format of dates attached to posts
• Create a custom header for the feed display on your website
• i18n support so you can display the feed in your language

Who this plugin is for: Any brand that posts regularly to its Facebook page and wants to integrate Facebook more effectively with their website.

Price: Custom Facebook Feed is free from WordPress.org, or you can spring for the pro version at $49 for one website or $99 for five websites.

2. Pixel Cat

Pixel Cat, formerly known as “Facebook Conversion Pixel”, allows you to add the Facebook Pixel to your WordPress site, track conversions, optimize your Facebook ads, and create custom retargeting audiences.

Features

• Create “Standard Events” – Use a point-and-click editor to create “Standard Events”, which allow you to track conversions, optimize Facebook advertisements, and build custom audiences.
• Customize event parameters to measure your Return On Investment (ROI)
• Create Events that trigger based on the pages, posts, categories, and/or tags specific visitors viewed, then use that information to create custom audiences
• Automatically track searches conducted on your site
• Exclude team members so their visits don’t pollute your Pixel statistics

Who this plugin is for: Pixel Cat is one of the best WordPress Facebook plugins for anyone who wants to conduct effective Facebook advertising campaigns.

Price: You can get Pixel Cat free from WordPress.org or purchase Pixel Cat Premium at $89 for one license or $99 for 2-5 site licenses.

3. Facebook Widget

Facebook Widget is a plugin designed to help you display the number of Facebook page likes you have, your page’s Facebook timeline, and more. The widget also makes it easy for newcomers to like your Facebook page while they’re on your website.

Features

• Easy configuration, with no need for code
• Option to add your own custom Facebook application ID or use a default ID with your Facebook page URL
• Choice to show or hide your page’s timeline
• Ability to display profile photos and a small header
• Shortcode support
• Fast & helpful customer support

Who this plugin is for: Facebook Widget is one of the best WordPress Facebook plugins for business owners who want to encourage some organic growth on their Facebook page without spending an enormous amount of time on it.

Price: Free from WordPress.org.

4. Thumb Fixer for Facebook

Thumb Fixer for Facebook is a simple plugin that makes sure your articles are displayed with the proper thumbnail image when people share them on Facebook. The plugin automatically uses the featured image associated with an article, but you can also specify a different image from within the post.

Features

• Specify Open Graph Object Types to customize display settings for posts and pages
• Connect to a Facebook App if you have one
• Automatically display shared posts and pages with featured images
• Select fall-back images for posts or pages to use if they have no featured image
• Preview what shares of your posts and pages will look like on Facebook

Who this plugin is for: Thumb Fixer for Facebook is one of the best WordPress Facebook plugins for WordPress site owners who have issues with Facebook displaying the wrong images when their posts are shared.

Price: Free from WordPress.org.

5. Live Chat with Facebook Messenger by Zotabox

Live Chat with Facebook Messenger is a plugin designed to bring the customer service potential of Facebook Messenger directly to your website. As part of the larger Zotabox package, this plugin also allows you to integrate Facebook with your WordPress site in a variety of other ways to maximize your promotion capabilities.

Features

• Easy popup creation for special promotions
• Header bar with countdown timer and coupon-making capabilities
• Landing page slider
• Slide out box creator
• Push notifications
• Facebook Live Chat
• Social follow buttons
• Easy store locator
• Testimonial collection
• Contact form creator
• Stickers
• Promo boxes
• Ability to upload your own custom banner for all displays
• Social mobile tools that allow customers to contact you from phones and other mobile devices
• EU cookie notification for full GDPR compliance
• Back to Top buttons to place at the bottom of your posts and pages

Who this plugin is for: The Live Chat with Facebook Messenger plugin is a powerful tool for anyone who wants to improve engagement and conversions on their website.

Price: Free from WordPress.org for the first 1,000 monthly views. After that, Zotabox plans range from $9.99/month to $149.99/month.

6. WordPress Social Login

WordPress Social Login makes it easy to configure your site so people can log in using their Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts. This encourages more sign ups and engagement because it means people don’t have to worry about creating a new account and creating a clever, secure password they’ll actually remember.

Features

• Allow social login with Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, Amazon, Windows Live, Salesforce, and Vkontakte
• Use default social login apps to eliminate setup
• Ability to connect with existing app IDs for Facebook and Twitter
• Customize the shape, theme, and size of all social icons
• Profile completion that prompts user for email & password if none is provided by the social app
• Assign specific WordPress user roles to people who log in using social login
• Add social login icons to any page easily with a social icon widget or shortcode
• Sync social profile picture with WordPress
• Enable email notifications to stay informed when people use social login on your site
• Customize login and logout redirect URLs
• Customize text associated with social login icons
• Shortcodes available
• In-plugin support form and ongoing email support

Who this plugin is for: Business owners who want to encourage comments and community building on their blog by allowing social login.

Price: Free from WordPress.org, or you can spring for the premium version at a one-time payment of $19 for the “standard” plan or $49 for the “premium” plan.

7. Revive Old Posts

Our very own Revive Old Posts plugin allows you to automate social media sharing for your WordPress posts. With this plugin you can automatically share new posts when they’re published and share older posts on a regular schedule.

Features

• Compatible with Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter
• Choose time between post shares
• Choose the number of posts to share
• Specify hashtags to include in shares
• Include links to your website
• Use a URL shortener to make links more attractive
• Integrated with Google Analytics

Who this plugin is for: Anyone who has a significant archive of high-quality articles that they want to drive more traffic to.

Price: Free from WordPress.org, or get the pro version for $75/one site or $149/three sites.

Final thoughts on the best WordPress Facebook plugins

The post 7 Best WordPress Facebook Plugins to Maximize Engagement Across Platforms appeared first on Revive Social.

In this post, we’ll talk about the benefits of Facebook advertising. Then we’ll take a look at three of the more recent additions to the Facebook Ads Manager. Let’s jump right in!

Why Facebook advertising is still worth your time

It’s not uncommon to see advice online that suggests you should ditch older social platforms in favor of newer ones. Of course, there’s certainly plenty of benefit to establishing an active presence on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. However, this doesn’t mean Facebook has passed its prime.

There are still over 1.5 billion daily active users on the platform, and about 2.4 billion monthly active users. In other words, the audience on Facebook is massive and highly engaged. It’s also a platform that reaches a wide range of demographics, making its mark with various ages, genders, and so on.

Plus, it’s no secret that advertising on Facebook can be especially beneficial. Here are a few stats to illustrate the point:

• 30% of senior US ad buyers report Facebook as offering the highest digital ad spending Return on Investment (ROI), higher than any other social platform.
• Ads are viewed more and more widely on the platform – in 2018, for example, ad impressions increased by 21%.
• Mobile ads are particularly effective, with mobile add revenue increasing by 50% in 2018 alone.

If you want to get the most out of your advertising budget, Facebook is an excellent option. Its barriers to entry are low, yet its Ads Manager offers a wide range of customization options and business-friendly features. Plus, the developers release new functionality on a regular basis. This means it’s very possible to evolve your Facebook advertising strategy over time.

Three key features of the Facebook Ads Manager

Whether you’re new to Facebook advertising or have been using it for years, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using outdated strategies. Staying on top of more recent developments to the Facebook Ads Manager system is key for using it effectively.

With this in mind, we’re going to review three of the key developments in Facebook advertising. Each of these features and options can play a key role in your marketing strategy on the platform.

1. Engagement custom audiences

The massive size of a platform like Facebook has its pros and cons. There’s a huge potential audience, but finding the right people and getting your content in front of them can be challenging.

To deal with this problem, the Facebook Ads Manager has long offered a ‘custom audiences’ feature. You’re able to define the target audience for your ads based on their characteristics and activities. More recently, this includes various engagement-related options, which you can see by navigating to Audiences > Create a Custom Audience in your Ads Manager:

Here, you can build custom audiences that are made up of users who have engaged with your Facebook content in particular ways. You can target those who have watched your videos, interacted with your business page, showed interest in your events, and more:

This is an excellent way to cut through all the noise on Facebook and cultivate an audience of dedicated customers or fans. You can focus your ad budget on people who have already demonstrated an interest in your business, which enables you to get the most out of your spending.

Plus, by building a variety of custom audiences, you can create and target ads separately for those who are familiar with your business and those who aren’t. For each new ad campaign, you’ll want to consider putting together a unique custom audience made up of the Facebook users who are most likely to convert.

2. Cost control options

Next, let’s look at one of the newest additions to the Facebook Ads Manager. Rather than helping you design or target ads, this one is all about controlling the costs of your campaigns.

First, let’s review how ad pricing works on Facebook. The platform manages ad placement and spending via a feature called an ‘ad auction’. When you create an ad, it goes through the following process:

1. You choose a maximum ad budget, which keeps your spending under control.
2. You’ll also set a bid for the ad itself, which is the amount you’re willing to pay for each view or click.
3. This goes into a massive database, which selects what ads to display based on their bids and performance.

This is already a pretty robust system. Still, it’s received some updates over time to refine the way it works. For instance, there’s now a flexible ‘cost control’ option, which you’ll see when creating a new ad:

With this option, you can make the most out of your budget. Cost control indicates the average cost you’re looking to spend per ad engagement. In other words, it lets the platform know what kind of results you’d like to focus on, rather than just encouraging the most results for the lowest bids.

After setting your cost control, you’ll see how it affects the number of results you’re likely to get. You can also select from a ‘cost cap’ or ‘bid cap’ bidding strategy:

Bid caps are useful if you’re on a tight budget since they’ll ensure that your bids stay at or below your cost control. In contrast, cost caps are more flexible since this aims for the average cost of your bids to remain at your chosen cost control setting.

The feature gives you a lot more control over how your ad budget is used. In addition, it lets you choose whether you’ll try to reach a broader audience or focus in on encouraging maximum conversions.

3. The Delivery View feature

Once you’ve created an ad, determined a budget, and set it loose into the world, the hard work can begin in earnest. After all, effective advertising isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ game. It’s vital to track your ads’ performance over time, both during and after each campaign.

This means keeping an eye on various analytics related to your Facebook ads. You’ll want to know how many views, clicks, or other types of engagement each ad attracted. Plus, you’ll need to understand how these results relate to your costs. With this information, you can improve both current and future campaigns, tweaking them to increase their effectiveness.

The Facebook Ads Manager has always displayed key statistics. These include the reach, impressions, and cost per result for each ad campaign:

However, there’s an additional section of the Ads Manager for more detailed analytics information. You can access a Delivery View for each ad set, which will offer crucial information such as:

• How your chosen bid strategy is affecting your overall costs
• The performance of your ads in the ad auction
• How often your target audience is being exposed to your ads

These details work together to provide a big-picture view of your ad campaigns. They’ll help you understand the relationship between your budget, bid strategy, chosen audience, and so on. Keeping an eye on these analytics and how they interact will be key to creating more effective Facebook ads moving forwards.

Conclusion

Three more recent additions to the Facebook Ads Manager that are worth checking out include:

1. Engagement custom audiences: This enables you to put your ads in front of the Facebook users who are most interested in what you have to offer.
2. Cost control options: You now have more flexibility over how your budget is used, and can choose between two different bidding strategies.
3. The Delivery View feature: With this new analytics information, you’re better able to track your ads’ performance and make improvements over time.

What do you think are the most useful features of Facebook Ads Manager? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!

The post How 3 Key Features of the Facebook Ads Manager Can Improve Campaign Results appeared first on Revive Social.

Linking your WordPress site and Facebook page together provides a number of benefits. For example, it helps you expand your reach by helping to ‘cross-pollinate’ both channels. What’s more, it lets you get additional use out of your content by re-posting it in more than one place.

Why it’s vital to integrate Facebook with your WordPress site

Facebook is now one of the older social media platforms (that’s still active anyway). Although it’s a part of the common vocabulary, marketers are sometimes tempted to ignore it in favor of newer, shinier options like Instagram and Snapchat.

While those platforms have a lot to offer, it’s not time to write off Facebook just yet. The social media giant still has a wide reach, and using it as a vehicle for marketing remains very effective. There are plenty of numbers to support those two points:

• As of September 2018, there are 2.27 billion monthly active users on Facebook (and 1.49 billion daily active users).
• 79% of Americans use Facebook, while only 32% use Instagram (the next most popular platform). The platform also has wide global reach, with a majority of users located outside the U.S. and Canada.
• 93% of marketers use Facebook as a regular part of their advertising campaigns, and 62% say it’s their “most important” social media platform.
• Ads on Facebook can have a high rate of return – 26% of users who clicked on ads in one study reported making a purchase (and the results in other research are similar).

The moral of the story is that creating and maintaining a Facebook brand page is crucial for nearly any business. However, if this is all you’re doing, you’re not taking full advantage of what the platform has to offer.

After all, most visitors to your website aren’t likely to stumble across your Facebook page unless you nudge them to do so. Similarly, the page will do you little good if it doesn’t lead people back to your website, where they can learn more about what you have to offer – and hopefully, convert into paid customers.

In other words, if you have both a Facebook page and a website (which you should!), integrating the two is key. This enables you to leverage your audience on each platform to send traffic to the other and gives interested leads on both sites somewhere to go next. Fortunately, if your site is built with WordPress this is an easy task – as long as you use the right WordPress Facebook plugin.

How to integrate Facebook with your WordPress site (3 key methods)

There are lots of ways to connect your Facebook page and WordPress site, and plenty of tools to help you. Often, all you’ll need is the right WordPress Facebook plugin. Let’s look at three ways to integrate these two vital platforms!

1. Add your Facebook feed to your website

This is one of the most popular methods of Facebook integration and for good reason. Displaying your Facebook feed on your WordPress site offers a number of benefits:

• You’ll be offering more content to your website’s visitors, and helping your site feel more engaging.
• Your visitors can click through to your Facebook page, in order to view its content and follow it.
• Recent activity in your feed demonstrates that your business is active (since most company sites change infrequently).

If you’re looking for a tool to help you accomplish this integration, you can’t go wrong with Custom Facebook Feed:

This WordPress Facebook plugin is both simple to use and highly flexible. It’s also free, which means you risk nothing by giving it a try. All you need to do is install it, then visit the new Facebook Feed tab in your dashboard:

Here, you can start out by connecting your Facebook account. First, enter your Page ID, which you can find at the end of your Facebook page’s URL. Then select the login button, and follow the prompts to get your access token:

After your account is set up, you can use the settings below to customize your feed:

You can determine what type of posts to show (and how many), tell the plugin how often to check for new posts, and even configure your location and time zone. When you’re done, don’t forget to save your changes to the page. Then, switch over to the Customize tab:

Here, you have a ton of options to tweak nearly every aspect of your feed. You can change its size and colors, choose exactly what elements to display, and much more. Most of the settings are self-explanatory, but you can also find information on how to configure them in the plugin’s documentation.

When you’re done, copy the provided shortcode ([custom-facebook-feed]) and paste it wherever you’d like your feed to display. This can be on a post or page, for example, or in your sidebar or footer. This is all you need to do to place a fully-functioning Facebook feed on your website!

2. Share your WordPress posts on Facebook

In the previous section, we looked at how to import your Facebook content into your WordPress site. Of course, you can also do the same thing in reverse. If you have a blog on your WordPress site, or otherwise publish new content regularly, sharing this content to your Facebook page is a smart move. It will:

• Let your Facebook audience know about new content right away.
• Make followers aware of your website, and encourage them to visit it.
• Enable you to reuse your WordPress content as Facebook posts, saving you a lot of time.

Once again, all you’ll need is the right WordPress Facebook plugin. In this case, we’d recommend our own Revive Old Posts:

This plugin lets you share both new and old WordPress posts to Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. Plus, it’s just as simple to set up as the previous WordPress Facebook plugin in this list.

After installing and activating the plugin, you’ll find a new table in your dashboard labeled Revive Old Posts:

Select Add Account, and then click on the Facebook icon. This will prompt you to connect your Facebook account by entertaining your APP ID and APP SECRET. If you don’t know how to find these, there’s a handy guide in the plugin’s documentation to help you.

Once your page is connected, it will appear in the list under the Accounts tab. Then, you can switch over to General Settings to customize how your post sharing will work:

You can set how often posts will be shared, decide how old (or new) they should be, and even include or exclude certain types of posts.

If you connect more than one Facebook account (by upgrading to the premium version of the plugin), you can also use the Custom Schedule tab to set up different posting settings for each one. Then, the Post Format tab lets you configure how your posts will appear on Facebook.

This is all you need to do if you want to share your older content periodically on your Facebook page. If you have the premium version of the plugin, you can even share your new posts as soon as they’re published.

3. Add the Facebook pixel to your site

Last but not least, let’s look at an integration method that’s a little more out-of-the-box. While you’ve no doubt been using Facebook for some time, either personally or for business (or both), you may not be familiar yet with one of the platform’s more recent developments.

We’re referring to the Facebook pixel:

This handy tool is really just a small bit of code you can add to your website. It tracks visitor actions relating to your Facebook advertisements, something that can come in useful in a wide variety of ways. For example, you could track how many people are making purchases as a result of your Facebook ad campaigns.

What’s more, the Facebook pixel delivers key information back to the platform about who takes certain actions in regards to your ads. Then, this data is used to optimize the way your ads are delivered, in order to boost your conversions. Best of all, this process requires very little input from you.

Of course, the first thing you’ll need is to have Facebook advertising set up on your site. If you’re not sure how to do this, we have a complete guide to the process you may want to check out.

Normally, adding the Facebook pixel to your website is best done by a developer. However, the PixelYourSite Facebook plugin will manage the task for you effortlessly. It’s even compatible with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads:

The process of setting up the plugin and tracking events is a little complex, but the developers of PixelYourSite have a set of comprehensive guides you can use to get started. Once the pixel is set up and active, you’ll be well on your way to driving new conversions via your Facebook ads.

Conclusion

Fortunately, there are many simple integrations you can achieve by using one WordPress Facebook plugin or another. As we’ve discussed, you can:

1. Display your Facebook content on your website, using Custom Facebook Feed.
2. Share your WordPress posts on Facebook, with the Revive Old Posts plugin.
3. Place Facebook ads on your site, and optimize them via PixelYourSite.

Do you have any questions about how to use a WordPress Facebook plugin we’ve introduced here? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Use a WordPress Facebook Plugin to Integrate Facebook With Your Website appeared first on Revive Social.