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: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charlie_Scala

Photo by _dChris

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 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

Use MeetUp and create a group surrounding your event – this might turn into something very valuable to do on an ongoing basis and create a nice way for you to build a local community.

Publish your event to some of the bigger online events calendars such as Yahoo’s Upcoming or Eventful. These sites have geography built in and help promote events that are near users.

Create multiple Facebook pages or twitter accounts just for the event and post relevant information by building local followings through twitter search and Facebook Groups.

Do a series of interviews with participants in the event or to tease out bits of content that will be presented. Record these interviews as post casts and post them on your event pages, submit to iTunes and offer them to others to run on their sites. Just make sure it’s great content.

Upload transcripts from the interviews or slides you intend to present to sites such as DocStoc, Scribd, and Slideshare.

Include quick videos and photos of before, during and after the event and host on YouTube and Flickr for added exposure.

Submit press releases before, during and after the event to sites such as PR Web and PitchEngine.

Cross post as much information from all of this activity to all of your social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and twitter as all allow links to videos, audios and photos.

The short-term impact of working a system like this to promote an event or launch is greater exposure and hopefully greater participation, but the long term impact for future events may be the real payoff. As you get better at this kind of social media routine, you’ll find momentum building through search engine traffic too.

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John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com

Photo by Ludwig Gatzke

A lot of people are confused by the term social media marketing and believe that it is only advertising on a social networking site, where networks monitor what users are doing and place ads next to them, hoping they will get a click. However, social media marketing is actually about different kinds of collaborations between people and finding ways that individual fans of a particular brand product or even a company can endorse it themselves on various social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others.

Social media marketing differs from industrial media marketing in that industrial media generally uses very expensive tools requiring a great deal of financial capital to publish its information, where as social media marketing uses fairly inexpensive tools that enables anyone anywhere to publish or access information. Both social media and industrial media have the capability to reach a small audience of one or two, or large audiences of millions. However, the time lag is generally much longer between a communications from industrial media as compared to social media when responses can be instantaneous. In addition, there are currently few, if any, limitations on social media such as on pages or hours. The audiences are encouraged to be active participants, to add comments, or blog or even edit articles or stories, as they deem necessary.

Social media optimization, or SMO, uses methods that generate publicity through social media and online community websites. There are many different types of technologies and applications for social media like blogs, vlogs, wikis, emails, podcasts, instant messaging and many more. Two of the most popular reference services are Google and Wikipedia. You can share photos at Flickr, videos at YouTube, personal music at Last.fm, microblog on Jaiku and Twitter. Besides the now universally known Facebook and MySpace, you can also go social networking on Avatars United, Youmeo and Second Life (social network via virtual reality).

Experts insist that social media is here to stay. Companies are now recognizing the need to be more involved in social media marketing, because it is through these channels that they can hear most quickly and honestly what consumers need and want. Businesses are learning that they now no longer wield absolute control over the behavior and buying decisions of their consumers. By paying attention, for instance, to a pro or anti product blog from a consumer, marketers have access to open customer discussions they never had before and then, in turn, open their own dialogue to be able to drive the needed change quickly.

Social media marketing opens up a world of fast flowing creative experimentation where an idea can be tested online in the morning and by afternoon there is a response. Social media techniques should be combined into the marketing mix to optimize the places where the impact can be maximized. The key element in successful social media marketing is to be swift but make sure to drive change in proactive way rather than being reactive.

Author Resource:-> SEOSapien is a SEO Company. We offer affordable and guaranteed search engine optimization services in English, Italian and Spanish. You can visit http://www.seosapien.com for more information and prices.

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About the Author

John Stone is an expert at driving traffic to any website or keyword he chooses. He can show you how to get top ranking in google just like the article you are reading. John’s Blog Facebook Training

Photo by lirontockerBuilding branded profiles, engaging prospects and connecting with potential employees and strategic partners are all powerful ways to tap into Facebook and  LinkedIn.

But, for the typical small business, there may actually be some equally important social networks you may not be so familiar with. The big networks get all the press, but small networks, say for instance, like the connectodex found here at OpenForum may prove tremendously valuable for small business folks due to the small size and targeted focus of the membership.

The list below represents some of the more active networks I’ve encountered when it come to small business social networking.

Visit a handful of these sites and choose several that feel right for your business. Once you build a profile, taking full advantage of the opportunity to link to your primary business offer full descriptions of your products and services, spend enough time to go a bit deeper.

Write or republish some articles or blog content, search and identify a dozen or so people to connect with, and give some advice, point to someone’s great content or answer questions from other members.

Don’t try to jump into every new network you can find, but do jump into a few outside of Facebook and LinkedIn and make yourself a bit of a larger fish in these smaller ponds.

In addition to OpenForum check these networks out:

• Biznik – this network for small business folks is blending online and offline by allowing members to collect by city and host and promote local events

• StartUpNation – a wealth of information focused on startups and very active community

• Wall St Journal – community build around subscribers  and geared, as one might suspect to professionals and financial folks

• Small Business Brief – heavy dose of search engine related content but very active small business focus

• Inc magazine – another popular business related magazine with community of entrepreneurs

• StartUp Biz – very fast growing network with lots of tools to promote yourself

• PartnerUp – small business focus and big on helping people find answers and connections for the things they need

• BizSugar – allows you to submit, share and vote for the best business information links on the Internet.. Great place to promote and discover your small business content

• CoFoundr – Programmers and designers use the site to find co-founders, build teams, and get advice.

• Entrepreneur magazine – Entrepreneur magazine’s community site has a lot of activity and content

• Business Week Exchange – Site from Business Week magazine is a great place to promote and find content on the web, tends to be a bit larger business focused

• Naymz – one of the better sites for those focused on building personal brands – highly indexed in the search engines

Image credit: andresmh

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing.