Facebook Marketing Success

I’ll be honest. I am getting so tired of reading article after article of people writing about how marketing on Facebook is a waste of time. Whether you are a B2C or B2B company it doesn’t matter. If you are not getting results from Facebook you need to change your strategy plain and simple. While it does take a bit of time, effort and budget there is no doubt Facebook is effective and should be at or near the top of your company’s digital marketing plan.


Tips for creating a successful Facebook page:

1. Understand Facebook’s EdgeRank System
If you want to be successful using anything you need to first learn how to use it. By creating new posts that best follow the EdgeRank criteria you can guarantee that it will be seen by the most possible people. Updates are key: post regularly, include videos, photos and links, have clear call to actions, and post content relevant to your audience. Essentially, the more engagements your post get the longer they stay in the news feed. (read more here: How to EdgeRank)

2. Content is Still King
It all comes down to producing good content. No one is going to engage with your posts and you will have trouble building a quality Facebook community if you are not consistently posting content that is relevant and interesting to your network. No, this does not include posting cute puppy pictures or grumpy cat photos. Those tactics are short lived and will not provide long term Facebook success. Plus that is not what your company is about so why post it? It is good to mix in some funny posts or off topic items once in a while, but you will want to make sure the majority of your posts are related to your company or industry.

3. Sponsored and Promoted Posts
Going the free route will only take you so far. Sometimes it helps to get a little boost by trying out the Facebook paid advertising options. If you have a smaller budget try out the Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts. These two options keep users on Facebook rather than sending to external sites and this is the preferred method of Facebook. Sponsored stories are great since those are essentially word of mouth recommendations from friends. So if a friend checks in somewhere or ‘Likes’ a page your brand can sponsor those posts so their friends will also see and be likely to ‘Like’ it as well. Promoted Posts are also great when you have an important announcement or content that you want the most amount of people to see and engage with. This option allows you to stay at the top of news feeds longer and when people engage with it their friends will also see it as well.

4. Test, Test and Test!
In marketing you can never keep doing the same thing over and over again. You have to constantly switch things up and test your strategies and Facebook is no different. Test different kinds of posts between text, pictures, video, links, polls etc… See which one’s your followers enjoy engaging with more and also what kind of topics resonate most with them. When you try out the paid advertising options test out different budgets, tactics and see which ones provide the best results. Over time you will find the winning formula that works best for your brand or company.

To me there is no doubt Facebook is a viable and effective advertising option that should not be ignored. Next time you read an article about how it does not work for someone don’t jump to conclusions - give it a fair shot, it will pay off!

Fans Unlock Pink Floyd

Last Thursday night as an unexpected appeal emerged from Pink Floyd's twitter account:

"Help stream Wish You Were Here 1 million times to unlock Pink Floyd's catalogue on Spotify,"

Consequently, on Friday, June 14th Spotify launched a global campaign to engage Pink Floyd fans around their iconic song “Wish You Were Here” - the deal was once we hit 1 million streams, then the full catalogue would go live. Help was not long in coming. On Monday the target was passed, and the magic and rock legends honored their promises

Pink Floyd are otherwise not known to like the digital age. According to Rolling Stone the band sued their label EMI last year because the label where allowing individual songs to be sold on iTunes, instead of the whole album.

"It's a great day for fans of prog rock, but it's also a great day for younger fans who have yet to be really turned on to the magic of Pink Floyd," said Ken Parks, Spotify's chief content officer. "That's a lot of what this is about: bringing a new generation of fans to one of the biggest and most iconic bands in the world."

It's also a great day for crowdsourcing, since this is one major example of the power behind the digital masses!

Check it out now: http://spoti.fi/pinkFloyd

Facebook no more

Despite growing stock values which some feel are being produced by inflated ad revenue projections, Facebook may be on the decline. The reason being that recent studies indicate that the key teenage demographic may be turning their backs on FB in favor of other sites. It was earlier this year that the company itself warned investors that their younger users are actively using other sites such as Twitter and and Tumblr. Well, research has now proved that warning true and also outlined some of the key reasons.

In a report compiled by Pew Research it would appear that the teen crowd is jumping ship in favor of sites that are more real and authentic. This used to be Facebook for many youngsters but the site has changed greatly and now the teens are getting irritated. The drama, watchful parents and the “too-old” adults are apparently driving the youngsters away to sites where these elements are less prevalent.

The younger crowd is favoring Twitter and Tumblr because they are essentially less social. They do not have to interact as much as they do on Facebook. Drama is a big issue for many who just don’t want to be part of the stresses and strains of other’s lives. Let’s face it, teens are really only worried about what’s going on in their own or their favorite celebs’ lives. So they don’t really want to watch drama unfold with their friends or family, I mean that’s just soooo embarrassing, right?

Facebook Engagement

Ever asked yourself; “Why is nobody visiting our Facebook page?”. You are not alone. One of the hardest marketing segments to understand for small businesses is social media, and but default so is Facebook. Honestly, most business do not understand Facebook at all.

The main concern seems to be the uncertainty of not knowing if the Facebook Page should perform better or not. Should we get more follower/likes, or have we reached the market we can reach through this channel? Is our online market segment already saturated? The answer to these questions is most likely; no, you can always increase your following base. The nice thing about online marketing is that is far much cheaper than regular marketing (should be a no brainer everyone by now), which gives you an enormous room for experimenting. And often just growing your online presence, increasing the frequency on your updates, will yield a tremendous return in fan-following – almost regardless the content!

This Infographic by Quintly shows a report of the average engagement pages get based on their number of Fans/Likes in April 2013. Look for the correct bracket to figure out if your Facebook-page is performing above or below average.

While this will definitely not determine what kind of engagement your page should be getting because of course, your case is unique and you could be way higher or lower, at least gives you an idea of what’s normal out there for pages with similar sizes.