This article is an updated version of the one published in 2010, titled "Three Ways to Advertise on Facebook - Successful Social Media Marketing". Since then, a lot has changed in social media: More results have been analyzed, markets changed, Google+ joined in and so on. What we can see for certain is that social media has taken over almost every aspect of our traditional web surfing, especially Facebook. In a separate article, we will discuss Google Plus's impact on this, but here we will revisit the previous Top 3 Facebook Marketing strategies.
Originally, we discussed three advertising methods: Facebook PPC, Facebook Groups, Facebook Business Pages. The first method is still accurate, but the last two are redundant, so we will merge those together and go over a more significant method, Ranking Facebook Search. Facebook *PPC, a Demographic-Targeting Advertising method: With Facebook advertising, you can target advertising directly to users, depending on their age, country/city of residence, what languages they speak, which school they go/went to, whether they are male or female and many other options. This makes it amazingly easy for many businesses to target advertising to their target demographic. Example: Targeting University of California Santa Barbara students between 21-24 to come to the 21+ new UCSB Jazz Lounge down the street. Facebook Pages & Groups, Originally called FB Snow Ball Method: Creating a 'Facebook Fan Page' for your company allows friends & customers to 'Like' your company. This works well for businesses that have a motto or cause. For example, an energy efficient lighting company could have a motto 'Go Green', giving more initiative for people to 'Like' its page on Facebook. The snow ball effect occurs when a Facebook user 'Likes' a page or its post, and this 'Like' then displays on the users Facebook wall/feed. All the users' friends and subscribers see what the user 'Liked', which leaves potential for additional 'Likes', hence repeating the cycle. What has also been added is the 'Reach' and 'Talking About This' feature in every Facebook page - allowing the admins of corresponding pages to see significant analytic data, such as how many people see a post, how many of the page subscribers talk about the page, etc. A concern regarding this method, comes from a recent analysis by Business Insider, that shows that only 1% of a brand page's followers interact with it, which you can read about here. Last But Not Least: Facebook Local SearchAnother marketing feature that should be taken advantage of is getting your Facebook business page found locally for your services. Applying this method is very similar to on-site optimizing your website. This means you want to clearly announce your services / keywords on your business page that you want to be found for. In addition to that, Facebook uses many social factors to determine your rankings, such as how many 'likes' your page has, where these likes are located, etc. For Example: It is more likely for your business page to be found for its keywords if the person searching has mutual friends that 'liked' your page, is close to the business location or you simply have many 'likes' from people in the searchers location.
Other Social Media Websites for Advertising: There are many more social media websites that offer advertising applications. LinkedIn for example, a social media website for business professionals, has their own *PPC application and just in the last year we have seen a significant boost in mobile social media sites and advertising methods, which will be discussed in a separate post. Where to advertise depends on your business. Social media marketing, even just Facebook Marketing, is time consuming, requires planning and maintaining, so make sure you got the right social media marketing experts on your team. *PPC - Stands for Pay-Per-Click and is an advertising method used by various websites, where advertisers pay for every click on their advertising banner (either in the form of an image or text link). This is a popular method used by Google AdWords, Facebook Advertising, LinkedIn and various other websites to make it more affordable for advertisers. Other methods include Pay-Per-Impression, Pay-Per-Action, Pay-Per-Lead, and many others. Find out more by subscribing to our blog.
