3 Common Facebook Marketing Mistakes

By Mary Anne Cipressy & David Trippany What's Up SWFL  

So often we see businesses trying to make their Facebook business pages work for them and after a short time give up on it as they are not getting the results they want. There are several common mistakes we see most business owners making that cause this. 

1.       1. Posts do not relate to their business. Ok I know what you are thinking. You read or were told that you should not post about your business on your business page. Read that again and hear how silly that sounds. What they were talking about were overly promotional posts, which we will get to a bit later. We have seen pages where after being asked to like the page, we have no clue what their business is about, why we would want to use their business or even recommend it. What they were doing were posting quotes, good morning type posts, happy day type posts all the time. Nothing that would tell us what they were about. Solution – If you are going to post quotes, they need to make sense for your business. Post tips about your business that share your knowledge. Post pictures of you doing something that relates to your business. Use humor and search for cartoon or visual jokes that relate to your business. 

Tips for Successful Social Media Marketing for the Beginner

By Mary Anne Cipressy

David Trippany

What’s Up SWFL

Social Media Marketing does present itself with a few challenges for those who are managing their own marketing. I see people trying to take short cuts all the time. They will use automated postings, link multiple sites together, post only when they have time and the list goes on. There are no short cuts if you wish to be successful.

Before you start you will have to accept that this is part of running a business and is as important as other aspects such as bookkeeping, sales or customer relations. We all make time for such tasks and your social media marketing tasks are no different.

So let’s take a look at something’s you can do to be successful with your social media marketing.

1.       Finding the best outlets – There are many options here and not every business is a good fit for each outlet. So how do you choose? A good place to start is to ask yourself where are your customers? Where are your competitors? Do not try to do too many all at once. As your business grows you can add others into your marketing mix. Just because you heard blogging is a great way to generate leads does not mean it is a good fit for you and your business. Start simple and small and grow into it.

2.       Building your Audience – once you have chosen your outlet of choice you want to take time to build a solid foundation. Having likes, followers etc. for the sheer numbers is never a good idea. Paying a 3^rd party for thousands of likes or followers will only give you numbers. They will never interact or engage with you and chances are they are not the ease bit interested in your product or service. So start with friends, business associates, family and most importantly your current customers.

Understanding Facebook Ads

By Mary Anne Cipressy
      David Trippany
What's Up SWFL  
Giving You a Voice in SWFL

There are many misconceptions we hear about Facebook ads so we are going to shed some light on these so that you have a better understanding of advertising and marketing before you determine that your ads are or are not working for you.

We were not a fan of Facebook ads when they were first announced until we changed our perspective on them. We thought it was just a way for Facebook to make money. Which of course they do but that does not mean you can’t use them to increase your business. When we did some number crunching it changed our thoughts on this. 

So let’s take a look at “reach”. TV advertising is based on households reached, radio is based on number of listeners and newspapers are based on the number printed. Facebook is based on reach. Think of reach in the same terms as TV, Radio and newspapers. You have an ad in a local newspaper and that paper prints 10,000 copies. Then your ad will reach, in theory, 10,000 people. On Facebook it is the same thing. Reach is the number of ad impressions, the number of newsfeeds or right hand columns the ad is placed on. So if the reach is 10,000 then that ad was placed on 10,000 newsfeeds or in the right hand column. Theoretically, 10,000 people saw your ad. We say theoretically because they do show the ad more than once to the same person depending on the demographics, number of those people on Facebook at any given time and the budget you use.  That is not necessarily a bad thing because people do need to see your ad message multiple times before making a decision. 

TV, Radio and Newspaper do not target the ads to people who might be interested in your product or service. With Facebook ads you can do this. If your customers or clients are women, you can have your ad set so that only women see it. If the age range of your customer or client is 35-55 you can set the ad so that only people in that age range will see it. The list goes on as to the choices you have as to who can see your ad especially if you use the Power Editor, however for this discussion we are keeping it simple. So which is better 10,000 people who see your newspaper ad or 10,000 people who are women and in the age range of 35-55?