Erik Qualman's Blog, page 544

Verizon buys AOL for $4.4 billion

CNN MONEY – Verizon is buying AOL for about $4.4 billion, or $50 a share, the companies announced Tuesday.

The deal aims to create a major new player in the digital media business by combining one of the biggest mobile network providers with a leading content producer.

It’s part of Verizon’s (VZ, Tech30) plan to dominate a future in which all content — from TV channels to publications — are streamed over the Internet.

By buying AOL, Verizon is getting much more than the 1990s dial-up Internet company that first introduced many Americans to the Web.

Today AOL provides online video services, content and ads to 40,000 other publishers. It brings in $600 million in advertising. It has news sites such as The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Engadget.

It is also developing its own video shows aimed at smartphone and tablet users, some of which have as many as 15 million viewers, which is more than many well-known television shows now attract.

Armstrong recently told a panel at the Internet and Television Expo that Internet companies and traditional cable, phone and media companies need to be coming together to create joint offerings, and that those who don’t find a partner are in danger of being left on the sidelines without enough scale to compete.

“I think we’re at a tipping point,” he said. “I think this is absolutely a time period almost like the beginning of the Web. There are years … where everything changes. And I think we’re in one of those time periods right now.”

AOL will become a separate division within Verizon. Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL (AOL, Tech30), will keep his job.

Armstrong told CNN’s Poppy Harlow that the combination will open new growth opportunities for both AOL and Verizon amid the shift toward mobile devices.

The merger, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close sometime this summer.

“At this point we don’t expect regulatory issues,” Armstrong told CNN.

Armstrong, whose stake in AOL is now worth $84 million, up from $71 million before the deal, said there are no plans for job cuts. Verizon said it would fund the purchase with cash on hand and short-term corporate loans.

Shares of AOL were up nearly 19% to just over $50 in morning trading. The stock closed at $42.59 on Monday. Verizon shares were down slightly.

The deal marks a major turning point in the history of AOL, which many had left for dead just a few years ago.

In January of 2000, when the Internet was still relatively young and a large percentage of users depended on dial-up modems, AOL and its stock were flying high. It used that strength to strike a deal with established media giant Time Warner (TWX), the owner of CNN, HBO, Warner Bros., and a number of other units it has since sold off. The deal was eventually judged to be among the worst mergers in corporate history.

The Internet bubble soon burst and the combined AOL Time Warner reported a record corporate loss of $99 billion in 2002, just a year after the merger was completed. The conglomerate eventually dumped the AOL unit in 2009.

Article by Ben Rooney for CNN Money

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

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Make Sure You’re Covered When it Comes to Facebook

If you have a business and are representing it with a Facebook page, or you are simply marketing yourself, you’ve got to think about the Facebook cover photo and what it can do for you.

Bottom line, you want it to enhance your page and your brand.

You may think it’s just a photo- but it’s a representation of your brand, and you want it to represent well.

As the following article looks at, before publishing your cover photo to your Facebook page, check out these Facebook cover photo do’s and don’ts:

Facebook Cover Photo Do’s:

• Make sure your photo is the right size. If it’s not, it will be distorted and out of proportion. Facebook calls for 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels high cover photo.

• Make sure your photo represents you or your brand. Keep it relevant. Remember, a picture speaks a thousand words.

• If you are including text (which you should), make sure it is not more than 20% of the photo. If it is, you’ll be asked to change it or it will be taken down. You should include the brand name, logos or slogans; just keep it under 20%.

• Use the grid tool on Facebook to get a general idea of how much text you have. Edit it if needed.

• Check where the profile pic falls. Make sure the profile pic doesn’t cover any relevant material in your cover photo. The best option is to make the two blend, so it looks like one photo. If you can’t do that, try to incorporate some similar features to make them complement one another.

• Do read over Facebook’s guidelines for cover photos.

Facebook Cover Photo Don’ts:

• Don’t go above the 20% rule. If you do, you’ll be warned, your cover photo may come down and you’ll have to recreate. Just start off the right way.

• Don’t include contact information. There are other places for this and your cover photo isn’t it.

• Don’t include a call to action, but utilize the button that Facebook has implemented.

• Don’t let the profile pic hide anything from the cover photo.

• Don’t use an image that is confusing to your followers. Even if some people may get it, don’t confuse anyone.

Facebook has turned into a marketing tool, and just like any loyal fan of Mad Men knows, marketing is an art. You’ve got to create something that works not only for you, but also for the forum and for your audience.

Follow these simple do’s and don’ts and your Facebook cover photo will be a big asset to your brand and marketing endeavors.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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Turn Those “Likes” Into Cash, How To Use Social Media To Make Money

There is a lot of advice on how you HAVE to use social media when you start a new business.

You want to establish a brand using Facebook fan pages, and connect with your audience with a funny but also insightful blog, while also being available on linked in with all your professional qualifications, and reaching out to people on twitter and on and on and on.

When you first start a business, your biggest goal is getting income. For 99% of businesses this means you need to make sales and make them fast.

Whether you sell your own product or services, or a mix of the two, you’re going to need to be able to turn your follows, favorites and likes into cold hard cash and I’m going to show you how.

The first thing you need to do is use social media to connect with your existing customers. The easiest way to make money with social media is by selling something new to your existing customers.

One of the cool things about Twitter and Facebook is that they allow you to reach out to your existing contacts as you create your account.

I recommend going a step further and sending personalized greetings out to as many of your customers and prospective customers as possible as soon as you create your accounts. You want to reach out just to say hi and let them know you appreciate their interest in you and your business and your available if they any questions.

I also recommend reaching out to your most important or VIP customers once or twice a month, just to make them feel extra special.

Once you’ve connected with your customers, the second best way to use social media to make sales is to offer a discount.

When I was studying marketing in the Gold Coast of Australia with a very successful marketer, he was fond of saying “Every day is a reason to have a sale. Today’s someone’s birthday and tomorrow’s someone’s anniversary.”

Once you’ve connected with your customers and prospects let them know that you’re having a sale for whatever reason you’ve come up with. Don’t get too hung up on the reason or having an explanation, I’ve had students of mine literally use “It’s a Tuesday” as a reason they are offering a discount.

The most important thing is that the discount be available for less than 24 hours. By limiting the time the discount is available, you invoke the psychological principle of scarcity which says that people are more likely to buy or do something if they see it as limited or the opportunity to acquire it as temporary.

Another way to use social media to make sales, is to survey your audience. Once you have at least 100 followers or fans you can start to ask them questions about what they want.

This is an invaluable tool, because surveying your social media following allows you to produce content, products and offers that are exactly what your audience wants to buy.

There are sites out there like Survey Monkey that allow you to get pretty in depth with your surveying of your followers, but simply asking what they want to read about next on your blog or what they would like your next product to be can provide invaluable information going forward.

The last thing I want to talk to you about is a tactic that only works if you already have a lot of followers.

It’s called promoting affiliate products.

When you promote affiliate products you recommend a certain product, for example my friend Amanda who is a fitness model with over 100k followers on Instagram promotes a protein supplement and some sort of Detox teas.

All Amanda has to do is post a picture of herself with the product along with her own unique code, and she gets money for every sale that is made. Last month Amanda made almost $5,000 for 10 posts or about $500 every time she promoted these brands. Now obviously Amanda has a huge amount of followers but even if you only have 2-3 thousand you can be making an extra 2-3k a month on twitter just from affiliates.

So to re-cap today I talked to you about how to turn likes into cold hard cash by keeping your existing customers and prospects close, and reaching out to them often, using social media to have sales, surveying your followers, and selling affiliate products.

If you take my advice, you’ll be turning those likes and follows into cash money, very soon.

 

 

 

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How Payment Processing in Ecommerce Continues to Evolve

Ten years ago, it was fairly simple to provide for transactions on your business website. You could take Visa or Mastercard directly through one of several gateways or your clients could arrange to transfer cash or send cash.

Image via pixabay.com

Today, the number and type of options has increased quite a bit. Here are some tips on how to leverage the new choices into your ecommerce operations.

Make Certain Your Shopping Cart Integrates: In addition to the number of payment methods and vendors increasing, the number of shopping carts continues to be a very competitive market. Finding a vendor like 1 Shopping Cart, that commits up front to integrating their shopping cart with most large gateways, is important for people who require that flexibility in order to stay viable for a number of years with the same shopping cart software. If your ecommerce vendor does not integrate with the majority of payment processing gateways or charges a lot extra for the capability of turning that functionality on, you may not be getting as good of a deal as you might otherwise.

Leverage the Gateways That You Use in Order to Enhance What the Client is Offered: Some of the larger payment gateways offer so much more to your ecommerce site on behalf of your customers if you take the time to explore their API, which is normally a set of programming rules for making different types of connections with their payment gateway. Paypal alone, offers several types of accounts- and even allows stores in an online directory to accept payment directly from their mobile Paypal App. In order to have access to that market for your ecommerce shopping cart, you will need to ensure that you use their API to do a little bit of development. Once you have completed the development, you will be able to put a menu of products and services up that will be accessible to anyone with a mobile phone when they physically enter your area with the Paypal mobile application.

Make Security Your Top Priority: When you make your gateway choices, cost is often a factor that helps you determine which gateway you will choose. Security, however, is a factor that customers consistently identify as being the top priority in a sales transaction. In order to please those clients, integrating with a gateway that keeps their payment information on their own site is a must. The difference for the customer will be an ability to log on to that third-party gateway in order to make a payment without entering their credit card information on your site- which in turns solves a potential security problem for both parties. That doesn’t mean that the bulk of your transactions need to be third-party centric, but finding a platform that is integrated with that type of service and featuring it as one way to pay for clients who value security should enhance your reputation.

Payment processing continues to evolve rapidly, with ecommerce platforms adding gateways and payment methods all the time. Finding an ecommerce platform that is well-integrated with gateways that offer the most security and payment options will enhance your customer experience.

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Facebook Launches In-App Purchase Install Ads

TechCrunch - Facebook is combining its lucrative app install ads with deep linking so a specific in-app purchase page opens once the app downloads. The result is a powerful new tool for direct marketers that sell products and services through apps.

Direct marketing is popular on the web where users can see an ad for a specific product and quickly open it in a new browser tab to make a purchase. But on mobile if a merchant sells through an app, it first must convince people to download their app, then hope customers follow through by digging into the app for the purchase highlighted by the ad.

Facebook is now letting deep linking handle that last chore instead, which could increase conversion rates to the point that app install ads and direct marketing can be one and the same. I call these “in-app purchase install ads”, and they could help Facebook blow past the $3.32 billion in ad revenue it earned last quarter.

Image from TechCrunch

Imagine a Facebook mobile News Feed ad for HotelTonight. The business doesn’t just want downloads. It wants people to buy hotel rooms that earn it a commission. So it targets an ad to people currently in Los Angeles who normally live in San Francisco– people likely to be on an impromptu trip to LA.

Previously, HotelTonight could entice app installs by making its ad say “Get a hotel room tonight in New York City”. But if a user clicked through and downloaded the ad in hopes of booking one of those rooms, they’d have to search for New York City once the app installs. That’s a lot of effort, especially when it can take a minute or so to download apps. Users might get distracted, forget why they downloaded the app, or just be too lazy. In this case, HotelTonight may have paid to get an app install, but didn’t earn money from a sale.

Now, HotelTonight could configure its in-app purchase install ad to immediately open the search results for tonight’s available rooms in NYC, or the purchase page for a particular room it thinks you’re likely to want. You don’t have to remember much or do extra work. You start much closer to purchase conversion, and HotelTonight is much more likely to earn a return on investment.

Facebook already sells app re-engagment ads that drive people to specific pages inside apps they’ve already downloaded. These are often used to catalyze purchases in an app someone might not remember they even have on their device.

But by merging this deep linking with the instant gratification and high conversion rates of app install ads, and the urgent calls to action of direct marketing, Facebook has spawned a different ad type all together.

Where this gets really interesting is if Facebook can layer on ways to deep link to different app pages depending on specific demographics or contextual signals of people who clicked on an in-app purchase install ad. That’s what ad tech startups like URX are working towards. Imagine a sporting goods ecommerce app linking to different types of clothing or equipment depending on your gender, age, and interests, but also your accelerometer velocity, whether you’re on a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, or what other apps are on your phone.

Facebook could one day map its users to the in-app purchases they’re most likely to buy, making the installs it sells produce ROI much more quickly and clearly. Rather than selling developers an oil rig, Facebook could show them exactly where to drill into users’ wallets.

Article by Josh Constine for TechCrunch 

Thumbnail  from Shutterstock

 

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Don’t Retire on Social Media and Ruin Your Future

Retirement may seem like a way off. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not.

No matter how far away it is, it’s probably not too soon to be at least thinking about it, if not actually planning for it.

Many people are fortunate to have a “money guy” to do the planning for them, but many of us aren’t. So we do it ourselves.

And we’ve all got a pretty valuable tool available to us help in that planning, and that’s social media.

Where to Start?

Where should you start on social media, though?

It depends on a little on where you are in your retirement savings plan.

If you’re just starting it, look at your company’s website and social media feeds for advice.

In the event you are starting a family and thinking about saving for college versus retirement plans, hashtag that on twitter to get both sides of the argument.

Use these platforms, too:

YouTube – YouTube offers great videos on any facet of retirement. Many people are more into visually and auditory information and learning rather than reading lengthy articles. When you are searching for information, try to find videos produced by legitimate companies or experts. That guy in his parent’s basement may not have the best advice.
Facebook – You just don’t have to friend your actual friends anymore on Facebook. Follow some of the big names in the financial planning world, like Clark Howard or Dave Ramsey. You’ll find links to blogs and new releases, and you can even engage if you have a question.
Twitter – Not only can you find answers to specific questions by using hashtags, you can also follow your favorites and trusted sources to see any new information, press releases and insight. Often big names will have question/answer sessions on Twitter where they’ll answer direct questions that you submit.

Don’t Avoid the Plan

Social media is easy.

As the following article looks at, the top 5 reasons why people avoid planning for retirement include:

1. Conflicting priorities – Meaning planning for the future versus immediate financial needs, like paying off debt or paying for college often takes precedence over future planning.

2. Failure to communicate – Basically they just don’t know as no one has informed them of options.

3. Not knowing about options – Many people just aren’t aware of the options they have. They hear the terms but aren’t sure what they mean or how to get things started.

4. Mistrust – many people don’t trust someone else with their money. They think everyone’s out there to rip them off.

5. Thinking they can do it themselves – Sure, many people can, but they’d be better off with a bit of help.

Any of these reasons can be combated with a quick sojourn into social media, even if it’s just asking “friends” who they use to handle finances.

So take a look into social media for getting your retirement in order.

It will, after all, be here before you know it.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock

About the Author: Heather Legg is an independent writer who covers topics related to social media, small business and working from home.

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6 Things Supporters Expect from Your Crowdfunding

Depending on the crowdsourcing platform you choose, you might have key requirements to provide your supporters—but that’s the bare minimum. Whether someone invests $20 or $20,000, they’re showing that they support you, believe in your project, and they clearly want to be a part of it. Nobody wants to be an early adopter or otherwise invest in a company that’s going to “ghost out” on them. Deciding early on how you want to show your investors and customers you care about them is a critical part of business. You can get as creative as you like, but remember to plan for the time and money necessary for reciprocation.

You don’t have to spend a lot of cash or even manpower to engage with your crowdfunding supporters. After all, they know you’re a one man/woman show or otherwise a small time hustling to make it happen. Here are some of the best ways to nurture your relationship with your “crowd” of supporters without that becoming a full-time job in itself:

1. Communication

Have you ever sent someone a wedding gift or attended a baby shower with present in hand and never received as much as a thank you card? When someone supports you, you need to show appreciation. At the very least, personalize an email to each of your supporters giving your thanks and sharing with them the latest news about your project. However, if you really want to make an impression, a hand-written card is an etiquette art that needs to be brought back.

2. Timely delivery of promises  

If your supporters have actually purchased a product or service, make sure you deliver on time. Plan for worst case scenarios like shipping issues or getting the packaging back late from the outsourced designer. None of this is your supporters’ fault. If you agree to a transaction, hold up your end of the bargain. There’s no such thing as missing deadlines for a startup when customers are concerned.

3. High quality

Quality should be your standard with your product, your customer service, your online presence and in every other part of your business. Why put something out if it’s not the best it can be? Why even answer phones from incoming clients if you’re not going to give them the best service possible? Quality suffers during crunch time, but that’s detrimental for your kickstarter. Spend the extra time/money on a copyeditor for your press release and quality check each of your beta testing products. You can also look into starting a content marketing campaign with different things like videos and infographics to help increase exposure.

4. Updates that are regular but not annoying

If you don’t have something interesting, entertaining or informative to say, don’t say anything at all. However, especially with kickstarters, you’re probably facing a lot of information, news and updates about the project. Let your supporters opt into staying informed (or not), update social media regularly, and if you’re trusted with their email, don’t abuse that privilege. There’s a thin line between communication and spamming. Keep in mind that if they’re supporting you, they want to be kept in the loop—but only if that information is actually relevant to them.

5. Passion  

If you don’t believe in your kickstarter, why should anyone else? It’s “easy” to display passion when putting together your kickstarter material, but don’t let it wane. Your supporters deserve to see that you care about what you’re doing. Remember: Excitement spreads, but so does apathy. Which do you want to expand?

6. Swag

It doesn’t matter if your kickstarter involves purchasing an early version of a product or not. Swag is a great way to help your supporters feel engaged while also letting them be free, walking advertising. From magnets to t-shirts, there’s no end to the swag possibilities. Plus, if you’re a business entity (even a sole proprietor), it’s a tax write-off.

Make sure you’re supporting your supporters—this is a symbiotic relationship. Nurture that relationship and they’ll return the favor when it counts. This is one long-term relationship you don’t want to mess up, so play by the rules.

 

Infographic Created By: Infographics.Space

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Yelp Seeks Buyer Amid Slow Growth, Rising Costs

Wall Street Journal - Yelp Inc. is exploring a sale as the company at the top of many Internet search results struggles to post strong growth with users and advertisers.

The San Francisco-based site was willing five years ago to go it alone despite an acquisition offer from Google Inc. Today, it is working with investment bankers and sounding out potential buyers, people familiar with the matter said.

A deal isn’t imminent, one of the people cautioned, and may not happen at all.

But that willingness itself is a sign of the struggles at a company that has amassed millions of consumer reviews of everything from restaurants to dentists to hair salons.

Yelp is contending with a host of troubles: slowing user growth, rising costs, a return to a quarterly loss and a stock price that has shed more than half its value since its high last year.

It wasn’t long ago that technology executives thought highly specific local searches, reviews and advertising would be a winning formula as Internet use moved to devices like the iPhone.

But Yelp’s stumbles are showing that the slow-changing world of local business is harder to crack than was originally thought.

While Internet users have increasingly searched for restaurants and points of interest in their cities and neighborhoods, Yelp and others have had difficulty turning the small businesses that populate the local economy into paying advertisers, said Sameet Sinha, an analyst at investment bank B. Riley & Co. in San Francisco.

“Small and medium-sized businesses are always fickle with their advertising budgets,” Mr. Sinha said.

It’s also hard to keep mom-and-pop shops returning as advertisers each year.

Mr. Sinha estimates that as many as 70% of Yelp’s advertisers stop buying ads on the site after a year.

Yelp also relies on Google Inc.’s search engine for more than half its online visitors. That reliance has created tension between the two companies over the years, especially as Google has pushed further into its own listings for restaurants and other local points of interest.

Yelp executives have complained that Google has altered its search results, directing users to its own local listings rather than Yelp, and it testified in Congress that such practices are anticompetitive.

A Google spokesman declined to comment.

Unique visitors to Yelp grew to 142.5 million in the first quarter, an increase of 7.5% from the prior year. That was a slowdown compared with the company’s 12.8% growth in the fourth quarter.

Yelp Chief Financial Officer Rob Krolik said in a call with analysts last month that part of that slower growth was “a Google-driven phenomenon, based on their algorithmic changes last year” that mostly affected visits to Yelp’s site outside the U.S.

Now Yelp may be looking to be gobbled up. Investors welcomed the idea. The company had a market capitalization of $2.9 billion before The Wall Street Journal reported Yelp’s exploration of a sale, and it ended the day valued at $3.4 billion. Its shares closed Thursday up 23% at $47.01.

Yelp started in 2004 after former PayPal executives Jeremy Stoppelman and Russ Simmons devised a local website to replace word-of-mouth recommendations. With a $1 million investment from PayPal founder Max Levchin, the site quickly spread to new markets and drew a community of contributors who regularly submitted detailed reviews.

Quick expansion allowed the company to trump newspapers and yellow pages as a preferred reference point for Web-savvy shoppers, and it began selling advertising to mom-and-pop businesses.

By 2009, Yelp found itself in talks about a possible takeover by Google for at least $500 million, the Journal reported at the time.

The discussions eventually fell apart, and Yelp decided to go it alone, raising more than $100 million in an initial public offering in 2012. Google, meanwhile, built out its own platform to display local businesses in its search results.

Most of Yelp’s revenue comes from small businesses that pay to advertise on the site through specially tailored profiles and payments for customer referrals. The company is still struggling to become profitable. It booked a $36.5 million profit on $377.5 million in revenue in 2014. But it lost $1.3 million in the first quarter, returning to red ink after three straight quarters in the black.

Other Internet websites that rely on local business advertising have also stumbled.

Angie’s List, which charges membership fees for access to reviews, had a $12 million loss last year after generating $315 million in revenue. Groupon last year posted a $73 million loss despite having $1.63 billion in revenue. Foursquare has tinkered for years with its business model.

Even as it struggles with growth, Yelp could be attractive to a wide range of buyers beyond online-review rivals.

A deep base of reviews can be a valuable asset because they take time to amass. Reviews are magnets for smartphone users, which is valuable to companies seeking mobile growth. Also, a website with a loyal following entices more users to visit the site directly, allowing its owner to avoid paying for search-engine advertising.

Yelp’s stable of consumer reviews could appeal to owners of other websites. TripAdvisor Inc., which said it averaged 340 million visitors in the first quarter, has added five new restaurant sites over the past year.

Priceline Group Inc. last year paid about $2.6 billion to buy restaurant booker OpenTable Inc.

Article by Dana Mattioli, Drew Fitzgerald and Douglas Macmillan for WSJ

Thumbnail from Shutterstock 

 

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Investing in Social Media Pays Financial Dividends

If you’re looking to make a sound investment for either personal gain or to benefit your family; social media can help.

By getting social, you can expand your research efforts and gather valuable information on the investment process.

Here are just a few ways social media can help with your investment endeavors:

Investment Advice

Although registered investment advisors can’t give direct financial advice on social media, that doesn’t mean there isn’t investment tips and advice out there.

If you’re looking for helpful investment tips, you can always reach out to friends and family.

Gathering advice from your trusted loved ones is a great place to start, especially if your social connections have a successful history of investing.

However, if you don’t feel comfortable reaching out on social media, blogs are another great option.

Many investors are starting their own financial blogs where they can speak about their own investment experiences. These blogs aren’t direct advice, but they are extremely helpful if you’re getting your feet wet with investing.

Potential Investment Developments

If you think investing takes a significant amount of time to do it right, think again.

The article How to Start Investing: Part 2 mentions that investing in today’s financial landscape is quick and easy. Well, it’s true, especially if you utilize social media.

Thanks to pertinent social sites like Twitter, you can keep track of developing investment opportunities from companies themselves.

Whether it’s an emerging business venture or new company that’s a potential investment opportunity, Twitter is a great place to keep track of the movers, shakers, and up-and-comers.

Following Investment Columnists

The financial world is filled with investment columnists and authorities who are always on the cutting edge of finance. By following these columnists on sites like Facebook and Twitter, you’ll stay up to date on the most important investment news available.

Investment columnists devote their lives to finance and pour a ton of energy into their advice columns and social media posts.

This is insight you really can’t find anywhere else. Whether you’re interested in investing in stocks or emerging companies, following the right columnists will help you navigate the investment waters with ease.

Reading up on Forums

Everyone likes a good forum, especially when they’re about to venture into unknown territory.

Whether you’re new to the investment world or you’ve been around the block a few times, online forums are a great place to stay ahead of the investment curve.

Online forums are the perfect way to immerse yourself in the investment arena in which you’re interested.

You can either seek out forums on your own or use social media to track down the best forum for your needs.

Registered Investment Advisor Compliance

Before you delve into social media to up your investment game, it’s important to know about RIA compliances.

There are strict rules that RIAs must follow when it comes to the use of social media as a way to share investment advice. In order to play it safe, it’s wise to take all investment advice on social media with a grain of salt.

Use social advice to inform your decisions, not make them for you.

When it comes to sound investments, social media can definitely point you in the right direction.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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6 Essential Facebook Marketing Do’s for B2B Marketers

Facebook has an image. You know the young, immature, and un-professional ones. But that’s probably because Facebook was invented for the sole purpose of being a “social” network and initially used by the teens or young adults. Now, however, Facebook is growing up just like we do. It has turned into a proper marketing channel, i.e., through “pages” made for brands and companies.

Marketing through Facebook requires just as much care, attention and engagement as that given by teenager who’s constantly taking pictures and uploading what not! The idea is to engage and entertain your Facebook audience, or in your case fans, in every way possible. You give them what they want and they’ll hoot and cheer your page. Spicy gossip is something your friends might be interested in. Your fans, on the other hand, could be interested in deals and offers. That means you have got to know your audience!

Here are some more tips for B2B marketers that could help improve their analytic s and turn fans into super fans — and eventually more leads.

1) Target Both Your Audiences: Forget about Facebook marketing strategies. First look at the content. Do you think it’s worth any attention? Here’s the catch. You have to target two markets here. One is the “businesses” category that requires some degree of professionalism. The other is your own customers. You’ll need to be able to balance both their requirements and provide meaningful content that targets both the audiences with the style, tone, and substance that they prefer seeing the most. So, manage your content as per their needs and preferences.

2) Think Small Before You Think Big: Don’t run after the sales immediately. It will take a considerable amount of time before you can convert your fans into super fans. First you have to reach out, create a buzz, and then awareness. Next you give them what they want (customer satisfaction). Then you ask them to spread and share what they now know. It is a step by step process.

3) Vary Your Content: Don’t just stick with updating a simple status such as “We Wish You a Happy Friday.” Nobody cares! Try to vary your content. If you have a How-To tutorial, don’t forget to post videos on your Facebook just the way you would post them on your blog or website(this works great for makeup and beauty brands!).

Also keep your fans up-to-date with the latest news and trends related to your product, service, or line of industry. News can be resourceful and convincing.

Whatever you do, don’t forget to post compelling images. It is a known fact that other links, videos, or random posts don’t catch the eye of the typical FB member the same way an image does. Wouldn’t you agree? Here’s an experiment that proved it;According to Hubspot, photos on Facebook generate 53% more likes than the average post.

4) Target Your Advertising: No matter what your goal of advertising is, it is a general advertising rule-of-thumb to attract the RIGHT kind of people. Lucky for you, Facebook has several options that enable you to target a specific audience before you post your ads. You can target your ad by using the location, gender, age, and interest options. In the interests section you can add anything you like: People who read The New York Times, people who like your competitor, people who don’t like your page,people who own a small business, students who graduated with a certain degree, or anything! So don’t just stick to the “people who like your page and their friends” audience. Go beyond that and hit the darts right in the center!

5) Don’t Just Focus on the Likes and Leads: A like doesn’t necessarily have to mean a lead. Similarly, a lead doesn’t have to mean you’re doing it right. What about feedback? How do you get those? Comments! Some businesses put up posts to encourage comments (i.e. what do you think of the new arrivals). The idea is to encourage feedback, or if you’re really good, then “I’ll do it because others are doing it” factor. Other times, you might just want a post shared because you want to communicate a message and create awareness about something. It’s not just a war of likes and leads!

6) Tailor it to the typical FB audience:

•Have a unique voice

•Post content that is relevant and original

•Keep it short

•Use Analytics to track your performance

•Use CTA buttons that are easy to spot

•Offer incentives. Incentives are magnets!

•Don’t show them everything until they have liked your page

•Keep it up to date

•Don’t go overboard with you post-frequency (they’ll end up un-liking your page). But don’t let them forget you either

•Respond to Comments and Feedback

Conclusion:

Those are a few tips that will help you get your Facebook page or marketing campaign going. Remember, even if your motive is B2C, you need to create a compelling consumer communication channel before you begin targeting businesses. Once you get your B2C right, it will serve as a basis to generate more B2B leads.

Ashley Sanford works at Peak Dissertation supervising a panel of professional dissertation writers. She’s also a passionate blogger with a core interest in leadership program and Business consultation.

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