Facebook Marketing For Experts and Creators

Just a few years ago, a little college network that barely made a blip on the global market, now gets more traffic than Google.

In fact, Facebook has become a huge market. They have over 750 million active users – that’s active, not just registered. And 50% of those users log onto the site every single day.

Having a Facebook presence is becoming more and more important, because people have come to expect it. If your brand doesn’t have at least some sort of presence on Facebook, you’re probably missing out on an opportunity to further connect with your customers. Both existing and potential.

For many people Facebook has become synonymous with the internet. A lot of people spend most of their time allocated for online activities, primarily using Facebook. Thus if you aren't reaching them there, you may not have a chance to reach them at all.

Whether you go after segmenting your Facebook profile using lists, (which is what i do) which we’ll get into later in todays lesson, or you’re setting up a Facebook Page for your business, having a presence on this social network gives you another great way to connect with your customers “virtually,” albeit-inside their “walled-garden.” Facebook groups, both private and public can be great ways to create a real sense of community around your topic and/or message.

This lesson is written like a reference guide, so it will give you some very condensed tactics you can implement immediately. To try to keep it “relatively” short, i’ve tried to keep out any filler, and just pack on the important things to know, and do.

Please share with me in the comments below, feel free to respond if you have anything to add, or would like anything else clarified better.

Cheers,

Jamie

================================================== Facebook Marketing For Experts and Creators

The main problem people have with using Facebook for anything promotional or business oriented in nature is the fear that they are going to BOTHER their friends, or be considered arrogant, boastful, annoying, or at worst... spammy.

A valid concern, but with a little more applied probing into the concern itself, the idea of not being spammy-is just that... Don’t be a spammer.

There has never been, nor will there ever be a-right way to use Facebook. It’s just a tool that we can use to virtually connect with other real people through a condensed (reasonably well organized) virtual interface.

The fact is that there are many ways to utilize the power of Facebook for building relationships, to establish rapport, create a community, and promote your brand to an audience that knows, likes, and trusts you.

Not only is effective Facebook marketing CHEAPER than their Paid Advertising program, it is far more likely to gain better brand exposure, and far more valuable leads and customers.

Like everything else... It’s all in the details.

Today you are going to learn:

• How to Optimize Your Facebook Account

• How to find fans and build your Facebook community

• How to show up at the top of your friends’ news feeds

• How to promote your Facebook pages with content

• What the secret is to actually making some sales/deal through Facebook

So let’s get going!

How to Optimize Facebook Right Now

Vanity URL - Go and claim your Facebook.com/YourBrandKeywords (If you don’t know exactly how, just do a quick search on google or youtube, and you’ll find a 2 minute walkthrough.)

Make sure public display settings are enabled - Again, if you don’t know how to do this just copy and paste “how enable public display settings facebook“ into google and follow the instructions.

Creating and utilizing targeted lists - This is something you should do to ”segment” your friends into categories that are relevant to you. In addition to “smart lists” which are like family/close friends/aquaintences, i have other lists, one for example - is all my musician friends. (songwriters/artists/musicians/producers)

Finding Fans and Building Your Facebook Network

1. You have to be posting, helpful, relevant content, on the regular.

2. Leverage every channel within your circle of influence and promote your Facebook page. Follow us on Facebook for exclusive deals etc.

3. Find similar groups and pages, join, then introduce yourself and message co-members inviting them to “friend” you.

4. Post relevant content you create to the relevant groups you join

5. Create fan only content and exclusive offers to incentivize joining

How to show up at the top of your friends news feeds In an attempt to bring Facebook users the best content, and filter out what it deems as less appropriate, an algorythm called Edge-Rank was born.

Basically the measurement consists of three attributes that Facebook refers to determine the “rank“ of which content is likely going to be most interesting, to a given audience.

1. Facebook Edge Rank = Relevance, popularity, and timeliness (Time Factor).

Good or bad, this is just the way it is now.

Relevance (or weight) is the score between the viewer and the ‘edge’ creator. How closely you are tied to the person determines the score.

Affinity (or popularity) is the value given to the comments and actions any given post receives from your Facebook community. As they ”like it“ comment on it, tag it, it gains in relevance to the community at large.

Time (or time decay) is the decreasing of value as time goes on. Today’s news is still new, while yesterday’s news is history.

The more your audience comment, click, like, and tag your content the better you’ll be ranked, and the more your audience will actually see it.

2. Post stuff that gets a lot of activity, and encourage participation.

This is why it is absolutely CRITICAL to encourage as much participation as possible. And you have to ASK. Don’t assume people will comment just because you posted something they liked... Always ask.

3. Manually submit status updates and posts to facebook

Do NOT use those auto-post applications like Networked Blogs, or RSS Graffiti.

It is NOT good for your Edge-Rank. It only takes a few extra seconds to post the link anyway.

4. Be active and friend people with MUTUAL friends

Don’t just go and click on any and every suggested friend and send out hundreds of friend requests...

The more people you friend with mutual friends, the better. And the people who you don’t know or have any mutual friends, be sure to send out a short message to them along with the request.

I.E. I see your a fellow member of ”group x,“ and i love to connect with likeminded individuals! Etc.

How to promote your Facebook Pages with content

Post frequently, and aim for most engagement. You should be posting something relevant to your topic a couple times a day... 1-3 is good measure. You don’t want to do much more than that, otherwise you can become annoying and may lose fans.

What types of thing to post?

Things that get LOTS of RESPONSE.

Promoting your page in any way comes down to you creating content, and engaging with your community.

Communicate valuable solutions to peoples problems.

All you have to do is to sit down and write down some ideas, and then take it from there. Do not overcomplicate this.

Go and explore what other successful brands/people in your market are posting and analyze how and why it works.

One type of content to promote that’s always a big hit is the “Opinion Format.“

The opinion format is very simple and straightforward.

1. Needs to be current or a relevant topic for people. 2. Ask for opinions and encourage participation.

What things NOT to post:

Posts that CANNOT be commented on... And of course those irritating little quick pitches about your products. Providing valuable content will serve you and your brand much better.

How to Monetize Facebook

First and foremost, is to NOT SPAM, and make the majority of your posts about your topic.

Facebook as a social network, is one of the most ”friendship focused“ network out there... It’s mostly about friends sharing pictures and posting quick or witty comments about their life...

NO-ONES there to get MARKETED TO.

When it all comes down to it, there is really only ONE effective marketing strategy for building your audience and actually making sales...

Launch and Event-Based Marketing

The reason why this works particularly well with Facebook, is because it is about audience ENGAGEMENT, Facebook’s specialty.

There are lots of ways to do this, and it requires some creative planning and follow through, but to categorize the approaches, there are three primary ones:

Contests

Contests are probably the best form of event based marketing because it centers on audience participation in a direct and creative way.

For example:

Create a wacky sing-a-long video of our jingle and send it in.

We will judge and select the winner based on ”a certain set of criteria,“ and the grand prize will be ”x!“

This is such a fantastic way to build buzz and campaign your brand because of the ENGAGEMENT factor.

Sweepstakes

Now Sweepstakes are a lot less involved, and can still go viral and build a significant amount of brand awareness. But it requires less effort, generally.

It’s more like the lottery, or a raffle... You like, or enter your contact information, and someone is randomly selected as the winner.

You’ve probably seen them in your newsfeed... Something like ”HEEYYY FRIENDS i have a chance to win X, please vote for me!“

This can go viral, very easily... IF there is enough DESIRE for the prize.

Why this works is because when you launch something, you are promoting something of value, WITH something of value...

It is a fantastic way to incentivize Cheryl to ”just check out“ this intriguing looking thing that randomly showed up on her newsfeed because her friend Suzie liked it.

Since both Cheryl and Suzie are both HUGE fashion footwear enthusiasts, they are easily attracted by the chance to win several new pairs of designer shoes, and it’s a no-brainer for them to go and enter which takes them 10 seconds for a chance to win something of real value to them.

Launches

For the information publishing and info-marketing industry where we are talking about information based products and programs, launches generally consist of an incentivizing offer to visit a page that makes an offer for a free gift in exchange for contact information.

It is similar to a sweepstakes event where you are promoting certain content in exchange for a target action or contact information.

While their are ways to do live streaming webcasts through some Facebook applications, which would be an additional promotional strategy, Launches will typically include a Facebook outreach strategy.

In terms of a major launch, they are usually just a part of the plan, rather than THE WHOLE plan itself.

This is because Facebook is a means to an end, for businesses. Your goal is to ENGAGE with your audience and stir up new fans and then get them to your money pages and into your funnel.

Now, as a content creator, i know that it is inherent to our nature to value contribution over GET ‘EM INTO THE SALES FUNNEL AND SHAKE EM FOR ALL THEY GOT.

Many of my clients and students can get a bit uncomfortable when other people talk like this... And with all the hypey marketers that make promises they can’t keep, it’s no wonder why people are so skeptical.

But, at the end of the day, it really is the case. It is easy to get distracted from this.

We are trying to take the conversation to a more intimate setting.

You want to get people onto your mailing list.

You want to get people back to your site, and onto your mailing list.

I repeat... You want to get people back to your site, and onto YOUR MAILING LIST.

================================================== Mission:

Step 1 - Go and make make the optimization tweaks to your account.

Step 2 - Go and find a relevant group within your niche, and study what they’re doing that’s working to create engagement.

Step 3 - Go and friend request several fellow members of that group.

Step 4 - Add them to a targeted list. Example: Authors

Step 5 - Brainstorm a valuable piece of content you could create that your audience would love you for, and/or that solves a specific problem they have.

Step 6 - And/Or brainstorm and create an ”Opinion Piece“ of content, that is relevant to your topic and audience, and craft it in a way to encourage the most amount of participation possible.

Step 7- Send me your results. Let me know what the response was, and what you learned.

And... YOU DID IT!

Until next time...

BE Your Best.

Jamie

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