Tag Archives: facebook

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Facebook Posts

By Charlie Scala

If you’re a small business owner and you’re a) taking the time to update your company’s Facebook Page, or b) paying an employee or marketing company to update your company’s Facebook Page, it is equally important to compare your posts to see what type of content your fans value.

In order to see how many impressions and how much feedback each post receives, use Facebook Analytics. All you have to do is go to the “insights” section of your Facebook Fan Page and click “See All”. This brings you to the Facebook Analytics dashboard, where you can view user statistics and interaction statistics.

In order to measure the quality of your posts over time, start by clicking on the interactions tab. This section recaps your most recent posts, the dates and times they were posted, how many impressions each received, and the amount of feedback per impression. (I recommend exporting these statistics to excel once a month, which you do right from Facebook Analytics dashboard. This will allow you to archive results to see more than just recent posts.)

On the Facebook Analytics dashboard, posts are sorted chronologically, which allows administrators to compare impressions and feedback among posts. This shows us how many times each post was viewed and the percentage of reactions per impression. You can also click on “impressions” to sort the posts from highest to lowest number of impressions, or you can click on “feedback” to sort posts from the highest to lowest percentage of feedback.

(Keep in mind that feedback is a percentage based on the number of impressions. Let’s say you have 1000 impressions on a post, and 5 people click the like button, and 5 people comment. That gives you a feedback rating of 10/1000, or 1%. If another post receives 100 impressions and two people click the like button, that post will receive a feedback percentage of 2%. Even though this is a higher percentage, the overall amount of feedback was much lower, two reactions compared to ten reactions.)

Unfortunately at this time, Facebook only measures the overall number of times that posts have been seen on Facebook (on your wall or other walls), not the number of unique users that saw the post. Still, measuring impressions and feedback over time can give you a better indication of what engages your audience. These post statistics are also available to fan page administrators when viewing your Facebook Fan Page wall.

Measuring impressions over time is a good way to judge your page’s activity. If impressions are rising, that means you’re probably adding new fans on a regular basis and offering compelling posts to keep fans interested. If the number of impressions drops over time, that probably means that your fans are not coming back to your page on a regular basis.

Monitoring feedback between posts is a good way to track what type of content engages your audience. When comparing feedback between posts, think about what content you’re offering. Is it a price discount, news, tips, photos, announcement, or something else? Once you’ve categorized your posts by what you’re offering, compare the feedback on each to see what engages your audience.

For example, if you own a running shoe company and you post sneaker discounts, marathon stories, running tips, and pictures of new shoes, compare the feedback you’re getting between each type of post. If 15 people click the like button when you post a picture of a new sneaker and only two or three people click the like button when you post a price discount, it could mean your fans value new running technology and innovation, not cheap prices.

Tracking the effectiveness of the type of content you offer in each post will give you a better indication of what the people that “like” your page value from your product or service. The key is to categorize and monitor your posts over time. Then, use that information to post content that your fans will view, “like,” comment on.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charlie_Scala

HO, HO, HO! Bring Christmas To The Masses By Using Mobile Marketing

Digitalks #11
Photo by _dChris
by Drew Barnes

Think about it for a second. Who is ready to make a purchase more than the consumer searching on their phone? They are most likely searching locally either for the nearest store or a particular item. Get in front of these consumers and they are most likely to come into your store and make a purchase.

Marketers need to be aware that using mobile media during the holidays will put your product or store in front the people who are looking for it already. They have a question you give them the answers and scene.

Not to mention all the consumers out there checking prices, sending photos of potential gifts sharing them on Facebook and Twitter, and let’s not forget about checking in on mobile social networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp and Facebook’s Places. That may me all it takes to get someone to your location. Someone checks in and his or her friend notices and thinks, “I completely forgot about that place they have great gifts. I am going over there right after work”

Consider this for a second. How many freaking ads do you see over the holidays? So many that most are simply blocked out. Me personally, if I see another jewelry ad it may end with a hurt jeweler. With mobile this opens up a way to get in front of the consumer when they are away from all the competition and when they are in a buying mood. Great combination. Don’t you think?

Most people who have the capability use their phones will user their phones as a shopping tool from anything to price comparisons, sharing purchases and links with other and to stay entertained in a long checkout line.

According to Webster Lewin, senior vice president and director of digital innovation and strategy at MS&LGroup Digital, New York .’Providing useful mobile applications that actually help the holiday shopping process is a great way to stay top of mind and drive repeat brand engagement. However, the challenge of discovery is one of the biggest hurdles in mobile.”

‘Fortunately, there is a wide range of mobile advertising opportunities within applications that support the shopping process,’ he said.

‘In many cases the consumers that spend the most time doing those activities are also the ones most likely to have more disposable income,’ Mr. Lewin said. ‘Also, consumers that engage with your brand on their mobile devices are more likely to have a favorable brand impression, and purchase intent.”

Just those quotes alone should spur any marketer into action!

Here are a few facts to consider:
1. An analysis done by Microsoft of their mobile search data found that 53 percent of mobile searches on Bing have local intent.
2. Google suggest that 20 percent of all search is related to location.
3. Differences between mobile search user behavior and PC search: 70 percent of PC ‘query chains’ are completed in about one week while 70 percent of mobile users do so in one hour. Talk about being motivated to buy!
4. Over 50 percent of the mobile search queries are about things that are not very far from the user or right in front of them.

One thing to consider is to make sure your doing local search optimization as well so your store or product can be found on mobile devices when people are searching nearby.

Ramp up your mobile marketing campaign this holiday season and make sure you track your results so you can tell your boss the ROI and watch his job drop.

Happy Holidays Kiddos

About the Author

Drew Barnes is an expert in the area of local search optimization. Read more about local search marketing at the http://www.turnuplocal.com

Facebook – A New Marketing Avenue

by Brian Whitbread

Facebook and Social Media – The Next Marketing Opportunity

Marketing as an activity is all about reaching the right customers with the right products, and the result sought is delighted customers who are more than willing to open their purses wide enough to boost your revenues. For many years, marketers stalked their target customers through various means and by trying to get their message across to spread awareness about their wares.

Traditional Means of Communication

Traditionally, marketing communications were conducted via print, broadcast and such traditional media through disruptive advertising, where advertisements appear in between the content of interest for the customer.

Traditional media does give a large reach to a marketer with its programming of mass appeal. However, the wastage is equally high, since a large portion of the audience would belong to a different segment than the one that is to be targeted by the marketer.

Enter Social Media and the Internet

The revolution stirred by the internet as a medium took place because of the fact that it is highly personalized and provides more content on-demand than any other available medium. Social sites proliferated far and wide in their usage for a few simple reasons:

The power to create and distribute content is equally available to every user, irrespective of him/her being a customer or a marketer. In the earlier forms of media, that power rested with the editorial staff of the channel or the advertiser, but hardly ever with the user. The medium is completely personalized, and a user can create or join groups and further create content based on what he/she likes. Opinions are free and fair. This is one reason why social media is of utmost concern to marketers, since buying decisions are no more influenced as much by advertisements. The traditional word-of-mouth marketing approach has grown leaps and bounds on social networks.

Facebook – At the Center of Social Media

With 500 million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the number one social networking site in terms of activity and subscriptions. What started as a garage initiative by Mark Zuckerberg has now become the biggest phenomenon on the internet.

A user interface that allows for quick communication and the ability to create fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are what make Facebook extremely popular. Another important reason for its immense popularity is the wide variety of social applications that have been developed and made available within the Facebook environment.

These applications can allow users and friends to do joint activities like playing games that run endlessly, sharing photos, videos, and web links, and many more.

How does this help a marketer?

Traditionally, media plans were drawn to include television channels, publications, or any other media that can grab maximum eyeballs and effectively reach a selected target audience. The science of segmentation and targeting has become only more accurate in the case of social media.

Facebook provides a wide variety of avenues to communicate with the audience, which opens up an entirely different world of possibilities to have a fruitful dialogue with customers. Some of these methods used popularly by marketers are:

Advertising: The first opportunity, which is the most obvious one, is advertising on Facebook. The difference, however, is the fact that you can create your own advertisement in a matter of minutes and also specify the details of your target group in terms of demographics and types of discussions where you want your advertisement to appear. Fan Pages: Facebook allows every brand, as well as individual users, to create fan pages for their favorite celebrities and their own homegrown businesses. Large brands have also created their official pages on Facebook that have a huge, immediate fan following around the world. The fan page has immense utility to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect immediate and frank feedback from your customers. Branded applications: One of the most effective ways to engage a user toward your brand is by creating an application; this could be a game or a contest, with your branding coming across subtly through it.

What makes Facebook even more exciting is the way it allows you to target your communication sharply just to the customer segment you want to attract. It also provides analytics and page insights that give good feedback and measurement on the activity done.

The options provided by Facebook can be creatively explored and used judiciously for bringing about maximum benefits to any brand.

However, while doing all this, you need to be aware of the fact that customers have an equal say and have the ability to respond immediately to any of your actions with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Availing the service of a social media consultant to work out a social media strategy may be required so that your efforts will not be in vain.

Get more information here for the best Facebook training available: http://tinyurl.com/Action-On-Facebook

About the Author

Internet Marketing Development Practitioner