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Robyn Ackerman
In Advertising, , Instagram, , Tips

How Facebook’s Latest Change Will Significantly Impact Ad Targeting

Meta for Business and Facebook just announced that beginning Jan 19, 2022, they are removing “detailed targeting options” from the Ads Manager Tool that would be considered “sensitive topics” such as: 

  • Health causes (e.g., “Lung cancer awareness”, “World Diabetes Day”, “Chemotherapy”) 
  • Sexual orientation (e.g., “same-sex marriage” and “LGBTQ+ culture”) 
  • Religious practices and groups (e.g., “Catholic Church” and “Jewish holidays”) 
  • Political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures 

For clients of PDM, many of which provide services in the healthcare, education or professional service  industries, this can have a negative impact on personalized ad reach. 

Thankfully, there are still ways to reach your audience: 

5 methods your company can implement to still drive conversions through Facebook Ads in 2022 

  1. Engagement Custom Audiences: Reach people who have liked your page or people who have engaged with your posts in their News Feed. These people have already expressed a direct interest in your services or products and ads will yield a higher success rate if shown to them. 
  2. Location Targeting: If you own a brick-and-mortar or are advertising a local event, you can reach people in a specific vicinity using location targeting.  For businesses that offer services in the home, or companies that ship products, you may set your radius around serviced zip codes and your ad will be shown to people in those targeted areas. 
  3. Lookalike Audiences: Similar to Engagement Custom Audiences, Lookalike audiences can be built to target Facebook/Instagram users that fall under the same user categories as a seed audience.  Use this option if you want to broaden your reach to people who share interests, locations and have purchased products or services similar to yours.
  4. Website Custom Audiences: You can build a list on Facebook Ads that retargets anyone who has previously visited your website. Using Website Custom Audiences is a powerful remarketing tactic that will increase your conversions by 56%. 
  5. Customer Lists. If you have already built customer email lists in your own CRM tool and have permission from subscribers to use their information, you can upload your lists into Facebook’s Custom Audiences. This tool will help you target, retarget, and stay top of mind with old and new customers.   

Initially, once these changes take effect in January, you may experience a drop in conversions. However, if you set up your ads using any of the above approaches, you can avoid a big decline and keep your engagement and conversion numbers growing. 

Looking for help getting your ads set up? Reach out to a Pop Digital Marketing specialist and Get Discovered. 

Robyn Ackerman
In Advertising, Marketing, , Tips

How to use ‘Competitive Advantage First Language’ in your Marketing

The guidelines around how to develop effective messaging in your company’s ads have evolved considerably over the past 100 plus years. Fans of the TV show ‘Mad Men’ would be aware of the ad creation process in the 60s, which revolved heavily around storytelling via visual marketing collateral. And while that method is still well used, we now additionally rely on digital space advertising.

In the past, our ads drew on teasers, click-bait, and short descriptions in order to prompt prospects to click through to our product or service. As of the latest research, you have less than two seconds to grab the attention of a potential customer online – two seconds and they’re gone, they’ve already continued scrolling.

This means that the very first words a person sees on your posts, your ads and/or your website need to grab their attention immediately. One effective way to do this is by utilizing a competitive advantage first focused approach.

What is ‘competitive advantage first’ language’ marketing?

The competitive advantage first approach focuses on prioritizing your unique offerings, your differentiators in the very first copy of your ads – preferably at the beginning of the sentence.

If you’re unsure of what makes your company different, you’ll need to take a step back and do some hard research. Poll your current customers about what keeps them coming back, looks at what people are saying about your business in reviews, mentions on social, etc. What is it that comes up as the key defining feature that you want to be known for, and that others consistently refer to?

Why it works?

Very few businesses are entirely unique. There are likely hundreds or thousands of companies that do what you do, so you need to stand out to succeed. Catching the customer’s eye with your competitive advantage can be key to giving them a reason to click through.

Your secret sauce needs to be exactly what the customer needs, thinks he/she needs and/or doesn’t yet know they need yet. You are the answer to the question they’re asking.

Once you can adequately identify your competitive advantage, you can start working on the copy to place on your digital marketing campaigns. Your campaign language should visibly state how your service/product brings value.  If you only have those two initial seconds, it’s vital that the first words people see outline a value.

Remember to try and steer with positive adjectives, and to tailor each campaign to the audience you’re targeting.

Examples of Competitive Advantage First Language Ads:

Monday.com

This ad is a prime example of presenting its value to a select audience. Their Competitive Advantage? They’ve done research on their audience and know the demographics they are targeting respond to adjectives like “new generation”.  They lead with that claim.

Additionally, Monday.com claims to be the project management tool for Mac users.  Visually, they fill in their logo with the Mac brand colors to connect the two even further.

Allbirds.com

Allbirds successfully uses competitive advantage first language in this ad.  Look how they structure the ad copy under the video. Machine Washable is the biggest value and they placed that at the beginning of the sentence.  Normally it would be phrased, “When life gets dirty, you need machine washable shoes”.  But Allbirds took the value and restructured the sentence to grab the readers attention.

You can see how, by defining your key traits, you can boost your ad responsiveness. If there’s a key element you serve, it makes sense to highlight that in your copy – and with so little time to stop the scroll, you need to do so quickly.

 Need help with identifying your company’s Competitive Advantage? Let Pop Digital Marketing help you Get Discovered.

Robyn Ackerman
In , How to, Marketing,

Boosting a Facebook Post | Best Practices

Facebook offers a wonderful way to “boost” or “promote” your content by paying a bit extra money (as low as $5).  This is separate from Facebook ads, which requires a higher level of online marketing expertise to generate success.  Facebook has made it quite easy to set-up a boosted ad post which creates an attractive option to those not as skilled in online advertising to try out.  I see a lot of small and medium sized business utilizing this tool lately, yet only about 1/3 of them are doing it correctly.

What is a “Post Boost”?

When your company page writes a status, shares a picture or uploads a video you are given the option to “boost” that post.  See below for a visual on where the option is.  Boosted posts will appear higher up on the newsfeed (note: not in the right ad column) to increase viewership.

Facebook Post Boost

Why you should Boost a Post?

By promoting or boosting a post, you are reaching more people.  If you choose to have the post boosted, you can check a box to have it show up to people who like your page and their friends, or you can target it to anyone on facebook.  You can target people based on location, age, gender and interests.  This will guarantee your post is seen by those who find your business relevant.

What type of posts should be “Boosted” or “Promoted”?

First, it’s important to track your facebook insights to learn which content engages your fans.  Those types of posts will perform the best as a promoted/boosted post.

Second, you have to strategically plan the desired goals and outcomes of this campaign.  Are you trying to generate more likes on your page?  Bring about greater brand awareness?  Highlight a service or event?  Generate traffic to your website?  Knowing this in advance will ensure a higher return on the investment.

Currently, statistics show that boosting a facebook post works best for:

  • Increasing visits to your facebook business page
  • Creating awareness about events
  • Generating interest in online offers
  • Spreading updates and news
  • Contests or Sweepstakes

Best practices for boosting posts:

Make sure that the post you are paying to run has timely information.  For example, do not boost a post that states a date in it: “It’s Wednesday, and we are giving away 5 free….”.  By putting a date on it, anytime it runs after that day, people will ignore it.

Boost a post that generates “likes” and engagement.  Don’t boost a post that requires no action from the viewer.  Make sure there is a question to be answered, a page to be taken to with valuable information, or a hot topic to “like” or even disagree with.  The more action (clicks, likes, shares) the post gets- the higher up it will go with Facebook EdgeRank.

Robyn Ackerman
In , How to, Marketing, , Tips

5 Key Tactics to Create Engagement on Facebook

facebook engagement tips

Big brands and small brands alike all have similar goals on social media: To cultivate our online community, grow our followers and ultimately create a platform to convert new leads. 

What is Facebook Engagement and why does it matter?

Many times our clients at Pop Digital Marketing ask why they should try and solicit responses, likes and shares on Facebook. Facebook Engagement Rate is measured by the percentage of people who saw a post (the reach) and liked, shared, clicked or commented on it. As a result of Facebook’s EdgeRank Algorithm, your page’s engagement rank will play a leading factor in which newsfeeds your posts get displayed in.  So in short and simply put (there is a bit more to it), if people are not interacting with your posts, they will eventually stop seeing them.

5 Facebook Posts to Drive Engagement:

  1. Contests. Create a fun contest that requires participants to comment or share the contest photo. Facebook has removed the contest requirement of using a third party application, so you can make this as simple as you want now!  Facebook contests with the goal of increasing engagement also carry many other benefits if your team strategizes well.  Over 38% of Facebook users are active in contests and when the rules are simple to follow that number goes up to over 52%.

What works: Try requiring followers to post a link to a product or service from your website to your page.  This now increases web views and brings awareness to what you are selling. 

  1. Photos. According to Wishpond– Facebook photos attract 104% more comments than an average post. And while insights of engagement vary across different industries, there is a global statistic that engagement rates are higher on Thursdays and Fridays. 

What Works: Right now, Throw Back Thursdays and Flash Back Fridays are driving many successful engagement campaigns.  Another fun way to get people interacting with your photos is to ask followers to “caption” the photo.  This creates “buy-in” from the followers and makes for a fun way to inspire creativity. 

  1. Ask for opinions. Let your followers know they matter. A powerful way to solicit comments are merely by asking.  According to a hubspot study, the way you phrase your questions will determine the likelihood of response success. 

What Works: Ask your fans a “Which would you rather” question about 2 new services you are contemplating offering.  This will help with creating a sense of “ownership” and anticipation from your prospects.  For more on generating comments, read this blog. 

  1. Fill in the blanks. Fill in the blank posts are another fun way to up your rankings. Use this opportunity to be light and even humorous! 

What Works: While we generally post close to subjects regarding our business, fill in the blank posts can actually deter out of your industry zone.  The more entertaining the post is, the higher the likelihood of generating responses.   Tie it into the local weather, news or hot topic. 

  1. Like vs. Share. Like vs. Share posts are a nice little trick to utilize the draw of visuals while still extracting that opinion benefit mentioned above.

What Works: Post a picture/visual of two opposing sides (A and B) that people have strong views on and ask them like the picture if they want A to win or B to win.  Note: This one won’t really give you qualified leads but is an easy way to increase your edgerank.

How to track engagement:

Using Facebook insights you can easily track each post and its success or lack of in generating engagement.  It’s very important to track both your overall page engagement (how many people are clicking on your page and its tabs) as well as the individual posts engagement rates.  Once you have at least 4 weeks’ worth of data, you can start creating campaigns based on what you know your audience responds to best!

Robyn Ackerman
In Blog, , How to, Marketing,

Facebook Updates Its Posting Preferences For Pages

If you manage a business page on Facebook, your life just got easier!

Facebook has officially rolled out a new posting feature which allows admins to effortlessly elect if he/she wants to post as the page or as him/herself through a more straightforward means.  Way back in the day (yesterday), in order to toggle between the two identities, one had to click on the settings in the upper right hand corner of the whole page and change who you wanted to post as.   This was a confusing process for many page managers.

Where to find the new posting settings:

Now, each and every page post has its own spot where you can click and choose if you want to post, comment, share or like as yourself or as your page. You can also choose to comment, like or share as any other page you currently manage.  See visual below for reference:

Facebook post preference

Ways to utilize the new Facebook posting preferences to your benefit:

  1. You can create momentum on your page posts a lot faster. You can now easily write a post as the page, and quickly switch to your own persona to comment on said post.
  2. You can connect pages you manage. If you are running multiple Facebook pages for industry related businesses, why not increase both company’s exposure and engagement by commenting on one’s post under the name of the other?  This is a sure way to increase the likes of both pages!
  3. You can comment on posts of pages you do not manage- as any of your pages! Go ahead and bring exposure to your page by posting effortlessly on bigger brands! All you have to do is click on the little gray page flag in the upper right corner of the post and choose the page you want to comment, like or share as. See below for an example.

coca cola facebook page

Follow Pop Digital Marketing on Facebook for more tips!

Robyn Ackerman
In Blog, , How to, Marketing,

2 New Facebook Updates for Businesses and Pages

Facebook has recently made 2 updates that will shake up how you use the Social Networking platform to market your business.  And, if strategized correctly, you will see a positive outcome from both these changes!

Change #1 | Facebook Page Manager Tracking

On February 20, 2014, Facebook introduced a new feature to allow Page Administrators to see which of their page managers posted a status update.  The update shows under the company name of each post ( see visual below).  All admins of the page including moderators, advertisers and insight analysts will see the name of the poster next to the update.  It is not visible to the public.

Facebook Manager Posts

 

 

Benefits of Tracking Facebook Mangers’ Posts:

For companies that have multiple managers or content creators on their business page this will help with tracking, metrics and success measurements of each employee. 

  • You can now track whose content generates the most likes, shares or comments and provide incentives or bonuses based on performance.
  • You can utilize this information when training social media interns or entry level employees as a means of providing constructive criticism and suggestions.
  • If you outsource your social media to freelancers or a marketing company, you will gain better insight as to who is doing what and when.
  • It is an overall means of holding all your digital marketing employees accountable.


Change #2 | Tagging Another Page In A Status:

On February 25, 2014, Facebook began rolling out a new algorithm for page status updates.  Going forward, if your page writes a post and tags another page in that post, your post may been shown to the followers of that tagged page.  It is worth noting, however that Facebook will only show the posts that are relevant to followers with a history of interacting with that correlated content.

Benefits of Tagging Another Page in your Page Status Update:

  • Exposure to the followers of the tagged page, which may have thousands of more fans than yours.
  • Creating a give/take relationship with the other brands/pages that have the same target audience.  For example, when you tag another page, you are giving them exposure to your fans.  Hopefully, they will want to “give back” and promote you as well!
Robyn Ackerman
In Blog, , How to, Marketing,

New Trending Feature On Facebook

Facebook is rolling out a new feature titled “Trending” (currently only in a few countries and only available for certain users) on the right side of your homepage.

Trending According to Facebook: 

“Trending shows you the popular topics and hashtags that are being talked about on Facebook. You’ll see stories from people and Pages who’ve shared them with you or have shared them as Public. From the right side of your homepage, click a topic that’s trending to see what people are saying about it.”

Facebook Trending Feature

How The Trending Feature Can Increase Your Business And Brand Awareness:

Up until now, using hashtags was not something that proved to be effective for businesses.   A Social Media Examiner article from October 2013 explains:

“According to EdgeRank Checker, Facebook hashtags have done nothing to help with additional exposure for your brand. In fact the opposite is true.
The research indicates that posts with hashtags are not only less likely to go viral, but also make people less likely to engage with the content.”

Now however, Facebook is using popular hashtags, personal preferences, user engagements and user “likes” to decide what they display in that user’s trending column.  This means it is very important for your Facebook strategy to now include trendy hashtags to increase your exposure.  When a user clicks on a “trending” keyword, they will see all posts about said keyword.  You want your posts in there!

3 Tips To Using Hashtags On Your Business Page:

  1. Find an already popular industry related hashtag and use it in your post.
  2. Create an amazing hashtag unique to your business and ask your best fans to use it as well in related content posts.  As an example: ask fans a question and tell them to use the hashtag in their answer.
  3. Use a well known celebrity name, something big in the news or an upcoming popular event.  It’s already trending, the work is done all you have to do now is incorporate it into your posts!
Robyn Ackerman
In , How to, , Uncategorized

How to Embed a Facebook Post on your Website

Previously only permitted to developers, Facebook now allows people and businesses to embed a facebook post, picture or video on a webpage/blog.  See below for an example of an embedded post:

Post by Pop Digital Marketing.

How Embedding a Facebook Post On Your Website Can Help You:

  1. Create engagement right there on your blog
  2. Allows readers to “Like” your facebook page from the post
  3. Readers can like, share or comment on the post immediately from your blog
  4. Readers can even embed the post onto their website increasing brand awareness for you

How to embed a facebook post on your website:

  1. From your Facebook Page, choose the post you want to embed (note: only public posts can be embedded)
  2. Click on the ‘down arrow’ in the upper right corner of the post to open a pop up box of options
  3. Choose “Embed Post”
    Facebook Embed
  4. Highlight the code in the new pop up and copy it to your clipboard
    Facebook Embed code
  5. Paste the code on the webpage you want it to appear on

 

Robyn Ackerman
In , Hiring, Marketing, , Training

7 Qualifications To Seek In An Online Community Manager | The Hiring Guide

The position and title of “Online Community Manager, Social Media Manager, Online Marketer etc.” is fairly new to many companies.  If you are striving to take your company to the next level and utilize the web to gain a greater online presence and ultimately increase new customers, you have likely already started planning to add this new role to your marketing department.

Below are 7 qualifications to look for when hiring an Online Community Manager:

1. History of social media experience:Online Community Builder

This person should have at least 3 years experience with Social Media Marketing.  Just because someone is active on twitter and Facebook, does not necessarily mean that he or she is qualified to run your Online Marketing Campaigns.  What blogs and websites do they follow?  This will show you how current this person’s social media knowledge is.  How many facebook friends does he/she have? This is important for a couple of reasons.  First, you want someone who is social.  Second, you want someone who is well networked already, giving you instant access to hundreds or thousands of new people.

Other important questions to ask:

What Linkedin, FB groups do they already belong in?
How do they leverage those groups for their social media strategy?
What Social Media publishing tools do they use?
Does he or she know what Facebook EdgeRank is?

2. They know and LOVE your product:

The Online Community Manager is going to be the face of your company also known as your company ambassador.   Do they want to SCREAM with excitement everything your company offers?  This person needs to be proud to be a part of your team.  An ideal candidate will not be hesitant  to use his or her personal accounts/name to promote the company.

How well does this person know your product and services?  The online community manager should know your products and key audience so well that he or she can feel confidant promoting, marketing and fielding questions.  You do not want someone who has to depend on you to develop content conception.  When it comes to Social Media, passion is key.  Your company is best represented by those who are passionate about it!

3. They are a marketing maven:

This person knows how conduct market research, has experience with brand development and brand awareness.  Ask if he or she has experience tracking marketing analytics.  Many print marketing practices can be re-purposed for online strategy.   It’s equally important that this person has online marketing experience and knowledge.  This includes basic tech comprehension, best practice understanding of how, why and when to post online and more.

4. Awesome and engaging personality:

We used to hire introverts as our IT/Computer people.  Nowadays however, we need outgoing people to represent us online. Does your OCM have a great sense of humor?  Great posts and status updates are often the funny and witty ones.  Your hire needs to have the ability to engage customers online.  Usually the way people talk in person is reflected in how they converse on Social Media.

5. Creative, strategic and analytic:

Yes, usually it is hard to find an extrovert (see above) who is also analytical, but if you do- you’ve hit the jack-pot!  Ask your candidates to provide a 3 month strategy plan for your Facebook page.  See how creative they are in these plans.   Creativity comes into play with how this person goes about executing such strategies.  Another question to ask is how this person would turn Facebook Fans or Twitter/Pinterest Followers into customers.  It is one thing to generate “likes”, it’s another thing to convert a Like or Follower into a paying customer.

6. Great time management skills:

Re-activity is extremely important in building online relationship with potential customers.  If someone asks a question on one of your social media platforms, an answer cannot and should not take more than hour to appear.  By then your potential client has already moved on.  And so have all the other people watching.  Find someone who is willing to be “on-call”.  Most OCM’s have every social app on their phone so that they can be accessible on the go!

7. They have a common community with your company’s community:

If you are interviewing someone who claims to be “well-connected”, great!  Please note though of who these connections are! It does not really do much for your business if their connections do not coincide with your target audience.  If they are sharing content from your site to their connections, how effective will it be in getting you qualified leads?

Obviously, there is no perfect candidate.  If you can find someone who possesses the majority of the above 7 qualifications you are on the right track!

Click the button below for more on how to hire and train a rock star Social Media Professional:

Contact Button

 

Robyn Ackerman
In , Marketing,

8 Tips To Facebook Posting For Business Pages

Congratulations!  You finally put together your facebook page.  Now you need to grow your fan-base, figure out what to post and how to post it.  Below are a few best practice methods to getting started on your facebook business page.

Here are 8 tips to consider when posting on your Facebook Business Page: Facebook Pages

  1. Think about your target audience.  Who are you trying to reach?  What type of things would they like to know?  What age group does your fan base consist of?  Is it mostly female or males?  You can actually find all of these statistics on your page’s “insights”.  Once you can answer those questions, you will be better equipped to providing a great “fan” experience.
  2. What you post.  Is it relevant to your followers?  Are you posting something that will be of interest to them?  Are you providing your fans with original material?  People like your page because they like your business, brand or what you represent.  Everything you post should have something to do with your business or industry.  It is very beneficial to create a “publishing calender” with enough content to post for 3 months out.
  3. Be the first to post.  If something comes out in the news, you want to be the first to share it.  That way you own the post that everybody is sharing.  Therefore, I suggest that every morning, you search different news sites for important information in your industry.
  4. When you post.  When are your fans likely to be on facebook, and thus see your updates? If your target audience is comprised of retired empty-nesters, 2:00pm may be the best time to post.  If your fan base is mostly stay at home moms, nap times are the best time to post.  Common practices show that 7:00am, 11:00am, 3:00pm and 8:00pm are the prime times for facebook activity, but that may vary depending on your audience demographics.   This takes us back to the first tip of knowing your audience.
  5. How often you post.  This is an important one.  You don’t want to be posting so often that your followers start hiding your updates.  Likewise, you don’t want to have any empty page.  Most successful pages post 3-4 times a day, and post different things.  There isn’t anything more annoying to followers than seeing the same post multiple times a day!  Make sure to spread the posts outs throughout the day. You can use social media tools such as HootSuite, Sprout Social or even on Facebook, using the scheduler below your actual post.
  6. Keep posts short and sweet. When you start rambling, people stop reading.  It’s that simple.
  7. Don’t just sell your business.  If people want to learn about your services or products, they can visit your website.  You should  use facebook to engage your customers.  Show them that you want to provide them with valuable information, listen to their wants and needs, and every now and then let them know about a sale or new service.
  8. Give them something to talk about.  If you want your fan-base to continuously grow, you have to provide buzz-worthy information.  Sometimes the most shared content is the most controversial.  Use this method to ask questions and encourage your followers to participate in the conversation and share with their friends!

Good luck and may your facebook page numbers continue to grow!

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