Content Planning Ideas for Facebook Marketing

Facebook

The first order of business is the content plan. Facebook marketing is all about the content that you will share with your audience. Without a plan you will be aiming in the dark and be in danger of spending more than 10 minutes a day. Use a calendar like Google Calendar in which to help you make your plan. 

In addition to scheduling in the time that you need to work on Facebook each day, write in the subject matter, titles, and even outlines when a burst of creativity hits you for content that you’ll be sharing with Facebook.

Let’s talk about the different types of content that you will share and promote using Facebook.

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Blog Posts — Every blog post that you write on your blog or other blogs related to your Facebook Page should be shared via Facebook. Don’t just post a link to the content, post a blurb about the link, and ask people to read, like and share. Without this call to action included most people will look at it, and do nothing else. If you do automate sharing these blog posts, comment on your own post to get the interaction ball going.

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Images — Using a software program like Gimp or Photoshop alter images to include a relevant quote and a watermark for your Facebook Page, and then post and share it with others. Again, post something related to the image for people to read. Ask people to comment, like and share. The reason you want a watermark on the image is to show where it originated. These images have a good chance of going viral.

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Infographics — These are simply images that are longer and bigger that show the results of a survey or other information that is put together as a visual representation of the data. Infographics have a large chance of going viral, so also watermark infographics that you create. Again, explain the graphic, ask readers to comment, like and share. 

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Videos — Naturally these videos will live on another space like Youtube.com and your blog. You can link directly from YouTube.com or from your blog but you should also be sharing videos on your Facebook page. People love watching video. Your videos should be short and to the point, and as usual you should post a blurb about the video and include a call to action to watch, comment and share.

Facebook posts

General Update Posts — These are not accompanied by an image or graphic but are just general posts that you start to get a discussion going. You might ask your audience a question, post a poll, or other information in order to get a response from your audience.

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Comments — You need to comment on other people’s information on their pages too. By commenting haring, and helping to disseminate information from other people’s pages using your business account you can find more people to “like” your page. Make sure your comments are relevant and useful.

 

Depending on your target audience and your niche, make everything relevant. This is not the time to post about troubles at home, or potty habits of your children. Unless of course, that is what your niche is about. With each type of content that you will post on Facebook include an explanation or teaser and a call to action. Without the call to action, your readers may not follow through.

 

Create a Comprehensive Plan

5-blueprintsYour content plans should include a goal for the content, how you will share the content, and when and how you will share the content. There are different goals for each type of content that you share.  You may want to get more likes, more shares, attract more subscribers, or educate your audience on the topics of your choice. You may also want to encourage blog visitors to get more traffic, or to make more sales for a product or service. Every post to Facebook needs to have a purpose. Without a purpose don’t post it.

 

Know Your Purpose

You can have numerous goals at once, but you might want to start with just one or two goals such as growing your audience and increasing traffic to your blog. Once you master these, you can move on to more goals. With any goal you make, always take a step back and assess whether or not your actions are having the impact you desired.

 

Know When and What to Post

First decide what days of the week you want to post to Facebook, and decide what type of content you’ll be posting on which days. For instance if you’ve chosen to spend 10 minutes a day 7 days a week, you could devote one day to each type of content using the 7th day to assess everything.

 

Be Consistent

Finally, if you’re going to embark on Facebook in 10 minutes a day, be consistent. Spend the ten minutes enacting your plans. Avoid getting side tracked on irrelevant topic discussions and game playing. Spend the ten minutes following your plan to the letter. If you’ve created a comprehensive plan, you’ll be successful.

6 Tips for Facebook Ads that Get Results Immediately

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Top Facebook marketers tend to do things differently than beginners. There are a few crucial habits that these successful people have learned over time that help ensure a higher likelihood of success.

How do you get the best results in Facebook advertising? Follow these tips and principles.

 

1. Choosing Images That Get Results

Your image is the most important thing in your ad. Images that get the best results should …

  • Jump out at your viewers and catch their attention.
  • Be related to what your product or service is about.

There’s a big difference between Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. Google AdWords is “permission based marketing,” meaning people have implicitly given their permission to be marketed to on a certain topic. You’re targeting people who likely want what you have to offer.

Facebook however, is “interruption based marketing.” They don’t know what you’re offering, they’re not looking for your product, they’re just browsing their friend’s Facebook posts and maybe uploading a photo.

Your ad needs to jump out of the screen, grab their attention, get them to see your ad, and then get them curious enough to click on your ad.

Your ad’s job is not to sell the product – It’s just to sell the click.

Here are three examples of ads that have proven to work on Facebook.

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2.The Three Parts of a Facebook Ad

There are three main parts to a Facebook ad:

1)     The Image

2)     The Headline

3)     The Description

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The importance is in that order. Therefore, the order in which you split test should also be in that order.

The image has to catch the viewer’s attention before the headline or the description even gets read.

Once the viewer has decided to read, the headline should convey the main idea quickly and concisely.

Finally, the body should give them details and ask them for the click.

 

3.What to Do When Click Through Rates Go Down

Unlike AdWords, Facebook ad CTRs don’t stay constant. This is because people AdWords searchers tend to only do the same search once and you have a steady flow of unique visitors. Facebook on the other hand, your ads are repeatedly shown to the same demographic base of people. Eventually, they’ll start tuning your ad out.

When that happens, you’ll notice your CTRs gradually drop. What do you do when this happens?

There are a couple options.

Option one is to simply switch out the image for a different image. Marketers often find that just by changing out the ad, CTRs go back up because you’re either catching the attention of a different subset of the demographic or people just aren’t used to the new ad.

Option two is to pause your ad for 1-3 weeks. This will give people a chance to forget about your ad. Generally if you pause your ad for a couple weeks your CTRs will go back up.

The most optimal way to increase your CTRs is to have several images or ads ready to go at any given time. When the CTRs of one drops, switch to another. Keep switching back and forth until you hit a point where none of your ads are pulling adequate CTRs. At that point, turn the campaign off for 1-3 weeks then repeat the process.

 

4.CPM v.s. CPC Bidding

It’s important to understand that ultimately, Facebook is a CPM advertising platform. Facebook gives you data in CPC to make it easier for you to see your results and ROI, but in Facebook’s back end they’re tracking their CPM, not their CPC.

Why? Because Facebook has a limited number of impressions. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say Facebook has 1 million pageviews they’re selling. Let’s take a look at three different examples of how Facebook would rank their advertisers:

Advertiser #1 – 0.1% CTR, $1 Bid – $1,000 for 1 Million Impressions
Advertiser #2 – 0.5% CTR, $0.5 Bid – $2,500 for 1 Million Impressions
Advertiser #3 – 0.02% CTR, $3 Bid – $600 for 1 Million Impressions

As you can see, what Facebook really cares about isn’t your CPC or your CTR, but what they make on a per-impression basis.

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Keeping Facebook happy and making sure you’re making them the most money on a CPM basis is important. If Facebook will make more money by displaying someone else’s ad, that’s what they’ll do.

In other words, you could be bidding triple what someone else is bidding, but if your CTRs are low you’re just not going to get impressions. In the above example, Advertiser #2 is going to get more impressions than Advertiser #1 and #3 combined.

At some point in your Facebook advertising career, you should test out bidding on a CPM basis instead of CPC. Some marketers find they pay more, others find they pay less. It’s worth testing.

The real benefit to bidding CPM is that you’re talking to Facebook directly in their language. If you’re bidding higher in CPM than other CPM bidders or the effective CPM of other CPC marketers, then you’ll get consistent traffic without having to guess why Facebook stopped sending you traffic. You get consistency.

 

5.Keyword Targeting or Demographic Targeting?

Keyword targeting will often increase your conversions dramatically. However, it will drastically limit your impressions.

You might start out with 20 million people in your target demographic if you’re targeting Men between 20 and 35. But the moment you add the keyword “Meditation” in, that’ll drop to 20,000 people.

It can seem like a very drastic drop, almost like you’re not going to get enough traffic. But the reality is, with keyword targeting you can easily spend $50 a day and make $100 a day.

You’ll “only” be making $1,500 a month – But it’s much easier to get profitable on keyword targeting than it is on a generic “spray” targeting kind of method.

That said, if you can get a wide demographic to work, you could spend over $1,000 per day and make thousands or even tens of thousands a day with the level of traffic that Facebook can send you.

The latter style takes a lot more testing and capital to try out.

You set your keyword targeting in the Likes and Interest portion of the Edit Ad interface.

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6.How Much Should You Bid?

A question that’s often asked about Facebook Ads is: “How much should I bid?”

The answer is to start with Facebook’s suggested bid. In many tools like Yahoo! Search Marketing or Google AdWords, the suggested estimates are highly inflated. In Facebook however, their suggested bids are actually a pretty good place to start.

Start with the Facebook suggested bid. Then, if your CTR is good, gradually start to lower your bid.

Again, Facebook doesn’t care what your CPC bid is – They care about what their effective CPM is. If your CTR is high enough, you can keep on lowering your bids and Facebook will still be happy with the amount of money they’re making. Therefore, they’ll keep on giving you traffic.

Most people start on Facebook paying $0.60 to $1.10 per click. Experienced marketers with extremely high click thru ads can pay as little as $0.02 per click over time.

Start lowering your bids after 3 days or so of traffic if your CTR is high.

These are the most important principles when it comes to Facebook advertising. If you have attention catching images, you split test well, your targeting is on, you get good CPMs for Facebook while getting a positive ROI and you rotate your ads when CTRs start to go down, then you’ll quickly put yourself in the top bracket of Facebook advertisers and will very likely succeed.

Marketing Your Facebook Page

 

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It’s one thing to just put up a Facebook page – But if you want it to really take off, you’re going to have to spend some time and energy promoting your page.

Facebook makes it easy to get the word out with a wide range of tools for promoting your page. Here’s an overview of the various tools you can use to promote your page.

Let’s walk through these marketing options one by one.

ADVERTISE ON FACEBOOK (BOOST YOUR PAGE)

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Advertising on Facebook allows you to create targeted advertisements to drive traffic to your Facebook page. 2-boost-page

Your Facebook page will be shown to thousands of people. If you targeted your ad well, a good number of them will become fans of your page. You can also advertise or boost your posts, simply by going to your admin panel and clicking on “Boost Post” next to the post you want to promote.
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INVITE EMAIL CONTACTS

If you have a pre-existing email list or have been in business a while, you can leverage that goodwill using the “Invite Email Contacts” method.
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There are two ways to use this method: By importing your contacts from an email client or by uploading a contact file.
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Method #1 supports many formats, including mainstream email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird. It also supports autoresponder exports like Constant Contact or Aweber.
The latter method will log into your email for you, download your address book of people who you’ve sent emails to and import it into Facebook.
Once Facebook has your email list, it’ll invite the fans and contacts of your choice to like your Facebook page.

GET A BADGE

A badge is a dynamically updating clickable link to your Facebook page.

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You can place it on a blog or on your web page. Just click on this link: https://www.facebook.com/badges/page.php.
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ADD A LIKE BOX TO YOUR WEBSITE

Adding a like box to your website makes it easy for people on your site who wouldn’t otherwise see your Facebook page to easily like your page. You can access all the information here https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/

Just specify how wide you want your page, the color scheme and a few other options, then click “Get Code” to add the like box to your site.

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These are Facebook’s built-in marketing features. Using them, you can market your page throughout Facebook using ads, invite existing fans of your business, put badges and like boxes on your site, market offline with aliases and message all your Facebook fans with updates.