What is Social Marketing?

The short answer, Yes! I challenge you to come up with an industry that could not directly benefit from some type of Facebook campaign. This quick post will outline why Facebook is relevant to all businesses and will describe the types of campaigns available.

My business partner, @Alex Shaffer, came across the Facebook statistics page Easter morning (happy easter by the way!). Some of the statistics were really startling, but all of them pointed to Facebook being a powerful tool to reach people: This includes your business reaching people too.

According to Facebook they have 400 million active users. Active means they login at least once a month. Of these users, 50% of them login every day. The average user writes 25 comments each month. User’s upload 5 billion photos each month. So the answer is YES, Facebook is relevant to your business.

Now we can look at the real question… How do I leverage Facebook for my business? You are at the right place to find these answers.

The first place most companies should start is creating a Facebook page. It is free and easy to setup/manage. Navigate over to the Facebook advertising page to create one now.

What to focus on when setting up your page

• First, Update the info tab. Let people know what you do in a 30 second or less read
• Photos: Upload a few photo albums. Include pictures of your location, employees, and products. Industry photos are appropriate as well. Example: If you are in the business of selling racing memorabilia perhaps you could have an album dedicated to famous Indy 500 crashes.
• Do you have a blog? The website Networked Blogs runs a Facebook app that automatically syndicates your posts. This lets you get the ideas you are dying to share with the world… out to the world!  The important thing to remember is that different people like to access their content in different ways.  Example: Books.  With the help of technology some prefer to read their books as ‘e-books’ online or even on a portable reader such as the Kindle or Ipad.  Others prefer hard back books or large print books.  Doesn’t it make sense to give your users the option to choose how they get their content (and its free for you!)?
• Publish your Facebook page. So you have finished setting up your Facebook page and it looks pretty darn good. Its time to share it with the world. Don’t forget to use the suggest to friends link. We have found including a personal message such as, “Please subscribe to help support my company’s page” significantly increases conversion rates.
• Respond to comments! When people interact with your page be sure to respond. People like to talk, but people LOVE to talk when they know someone is listening. Responding can be as simple as letting them know you are here and you will keep their suggestions in mind

Ok so you now have a page and a few followers that interact with your page on a regular basis. Great! You are on the right track. You’re now ready to jump into the Facebook advertising game.

Facebook advertising is a great platform. It is affordable, effective, and manageable; however, where it really ads value is its state of the art targeting system. Before we delve into the details lets catch everyone up to speed on how Facebook advertising works. Facebook advertising is similar to other PPC (pay per click) services such as Google Adwords. The process is simple, you select a demographic you are targeting, create an ad, and select a payment type. You can either Pay Per Click (.10-2.00 per click, usually 20-50 cents depending on demographic and ad type) or per 1000 impressions (dependent on demographic).

Where Facebook really ads value is its targeting system. It really is state of the art and offers advertisers a powerful platform to serve their ads. Understanding the system is dependent upon understanding the information users provide to Facebook. Users provide their age, residence, interests, political views, relationships (romantically and family), religions, gender, sexual orientation, work history… the list goes on.

So what does this mean for advertisers? It means we can accurately target ads to an unprecedented level. Let me offer an example from my profile. Lets say an advertiser is working for a client who is releasing a slightly popular conspiracy novel (I’m thinking conspiracy novels like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code). The advertiser knows that straight males, aged 18-55, with at least some college are most prone to buy his book. There are over 5,000,000 people, just in the USA, who fit these demographics.

Our advertiser does not have the budget to advertise to millions of people. He needs to make every penny count. If we target those demographics + only people with Dan Brown as an interest we are down to a more realistic 16,800. The best part of all: everyone of those people have expressed interest in conspiracy novel books.

Facebook advertising can become a very hands on process. Finding a reputable company with experience and expertise in Facebook advertising could ease your process. You should expect straight forward explanations, like I have given above, that show HOW Facebook will help your business. Generally you should expect to receive weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports about your advertising campaigns.

Are you interested in hearing more about Facebook in business or Facebook advertising? Let us know by leaving a comment or by using our private contact us form to request more information about our processes for social network management and advertising.

For further reading check out another practical application for using Facebook in business.