Facebook Marketing for Small Business: Easy Strategies to Engage Your Facebook Community

Advertise Your Business Today with Tomorrow’s Strategies 

If you run a small business, then Facebook is your new best friend. Facebook can help you find new customers, promote brand loyalty, and turn awareness into sales. But the internet changes quickly. To take advantage of everything Facebook has to offer, you’ll need the newest tools and the most reliable techniques. That’s why Arnel Leyva and Natalie Law created Facebook Marketing for Small Business.

Facebook Marketing for Small Business is your concise guide to the Facebook marketing strategies that are working for today’s biggest and most successful companies. Leyva and Law will show you how to apply sophisticated marketing techniques to your own small business—and how to profit from them. With:

• Step-by-step instructions and full-color screenshots


• Handy guide to optimize your Facebook business page


• Tools for creating Facebook ads and tracking your results


• Real-life examples of Facebook marketing success stories


• Pro tips for using Instagram, Twitter, promotions, sweepstakes, and e-commerce

 Facebook Marketing for Small Business gives you everything you need to improve your online marketing today.

Click Here For More Information

Facebook Marketing for Small Business: Easy Strategies to Engage Your Facebook Community

Subject Line Testing: 5 Things To Keep In Mind - Business 2 Community

Kinda Fairly Extremely recently, we’ve talked some about A/B testing and the wonders it’ll do for your email marketing program. And while you can do A/B testing for a boatload of creative and design concepts with your emails, let’s focus more on perhaps the most important part of the email: the subject line.

Why is this at the top of the list? Because it’s the first thing your subscribers will see. And if the subject line doesn’t tickle their fancy right off the bat, you’re already treading in perilous waters. The kind with sharks or piranhas (the James Cameron kind).

We’ve got what we call a white paper in our ‘hood on the subject of testing, and we highly suggest you check it out …

… and, hey, it costs you nothing! Go buy an ice coffee with that money or a slice of ‘za.

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5. Use Action-Oriented Vernacular

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, may she ever rest in peace, once advised that you “check your vernacular” (after which she’d get back to ya, but we’re just focusing on the “vernacular” part). If your email is for some sort of sale or product launch or anything that involves a transaction of cool, cool dollars — try using subject lines that create a sense of urgency for what you’re selling.

Notice the trigger words we used here. We told you what you were getting, the rarity of it, and that it doesn’t last long. This formula can be mixed and matched and moved around to serve whatever you’re selling.

There’s just one thing wrong with it. (Okay — there are a ton of things wrong with it, but let’s not stop the ball once it’s rolling.)

4. Shorter Is Better

You can only have so many characters in your subject line and, even then, it’s silly to feel like you need to use the entire space. In fact, we advise against doing so.

Because we live in an age where information hits us faster than even ludicrous speed, it’s important to grab your subscribers’ attention immediately and in a concise fashion. So while the above cry was very descriptive, it was far too long.

So take some time when it comes to writing your subject lines. We advise keeping a 50 character limit. Rewrite and edit and cut until you feel comfortable with the length and copy. And remember: We’re testing here, so come up with multiple variations, or even completely different lines. The goal is to find the one that gets your subscribers to open what you’re sending.

3. Review Past Successes

So now you have the basics down, but you’ve hit a creative or strategic block when it comes to crafting your subject line. Don’t worry about it: Look at what’s worked for you in the past.

Check the analytics you have hanging around on open-rates, conversions, and click throughs on campaigns that have straight killed it in the past. Heck, take it a step further: Look at campaigns that didn’t do so spectacularly; check for things like unsubscribes and opt outs.

Use this treasure trove of knowledge to zero in on subject lines that seemed to do pretty well. Even look for commonalities like specific words, or punctuation. They may seem tiny, but you never know when a single word could be the difference between a successful campaign and one that’s going nowhere fast.

2. Be Aware Of Spam Filters

Our Director of Deliverability gave a pretty good breakdown on avoiding spam filters. It’s a good quick read and we recommend you giving it a look.

But we’ll give you a quick crash course anyway because, hey, you’re already here. In a nutshell there are two big factors that determine if you’re heading for a subscriber’s spam box or not. The first one, perhaps obviously, is word choice. Because of the nature of today’s spam filters, it’s not exactly easy to nail down a comprehensive vocab list. This is in part due to the fact that that list is ever-changing. Still, some style choices like ALL CAPS AND EXCESSIVE EXCLAMATION POINTS CAN FILTER OUT YOUR EMAILS!!!!!!!! If you want some good examples of what will get you tossed in the spam jail, you have a great resource easily at your disposal: Your own spam box. Just perusing the first page of that can get you cued in on what isn’t passing for normal subject lines these days.

The second factor to keep in mind is that today’s spam filters take engagement into consideration. If you’re sending crisp, fresh-to-death emails that people are opening and clicking on, then you’ll be square. If your subscribers aren’t opening or are immediately reporting your sends as spam, then your email market program is in huge trouble.

1. First Impressions Are Important

You’ve been hearing this your entire life. Appear knowledgeable and confident in job interviews. Don’t annoy your teacher on the first day of class. Don’t order chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese on a first date.

Why? Because the first impression someone gets of you is going to be a deciding figure in whether you’re worth their time or not. The same holds true with for your subscribers. When people subscribe to your email list, your welcome email’s subject line should make a splash, not miss the pool. Make sure you grab their attention right off the bat. If a subscriber has filled out some preferences, go ahead and send them something relevant. Is there a call-to-action involved? Make sure they know, and don’t be annoying about it.

Subject Line Testing: 5 Things To Keep In Mind - Business 2 Community

A Friendly Giant: How Facebook is Using Instant Articles to Woo Publishers - Business 2 Community

Facebook, always known to be a giant, is appearing increasingly friendly as of late.

To publishers (and advertisers), that is.

Whether the discussion is about social media, media in general, new avenues for publishing content, or anything else vaguely media-related – Facebook is likely to come up at some point. With a fifth of the world’s population logged on as active users, this is inevitable. These truths represent both great challenges and great opportunities for publishers and marketers.

To wit, Facebook has tinkered with the way they approach their relationships with large publishers of digital content. Seeking to improve their own user experience (we all prefer experiencing a platform when the content we’re scrolling through is high quality and interesting, after all) while deepening their lucrative ties with publishers, they have announced one of the most important of these changes: Instant Articles.

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Facebook Met Publishers on Their Terms

Basically, Instant Articles are News Feed-based spaces where publishers can post highly interactive multimedia “articles.” I use quotations because the tools Facebook is offering for building this type of content are indicative of far more stimulating experiences than merely reading a traditional newspaper article. Some of these features include colorful cinemagraph covers, autoplay videos, intensely colorful and easily zoomable photographs, and even interactive maps to give stories a geographic context. Clearly, these are meant to be engaged with on a deep level, something that both publishers and advertisers can get behind.

Facebook sees these as a momentous new development in the field of online publishing:

“Powerful new creative tools bring your stories to life. Instantly zoom into high-resolution photos and tilt to explore in detail. Watch autoplay video come alive as you scroll through the article. See where it all happened with interactive maps. Hear the author’s voice with embedded audio captions.”

The language is both bold and provocative, as are the digital tools they are describing. With Instant Articles, publishers can create a user experience that is equal parts evocative, informative, and unique to their brand. While some publishing giants were wary of going full bore into the new publishing platform, Facebook was able to entice nine major American and British publishing outlets: The New York Times, National Geographic, and BuzzFeed being the most often discussed of the bunch.

Facebook knew from the start that publishers would have concerns about the new strategy, largely stemming from directing their user experience away from their own websites and on to the Facebook News Feed. According to The New York Times (who, coincidentally are one of the publishers now on board), employees from The Guardian were the most hesitant, suggesting to peers at other outlets that “publishers should band together to negotiate deals that work for the whole industry, and should retain control of their own advertising.” It’s unclear whether such collusion was necessary, but one thing is clear: Facebook understood the concerns and went all out in alleviating them. In order to create a program that was too good for the publishers to pass up, Facebook took a number of measures.

1. Ad Revenue: Facebook is allowing publishers to keep 100% of the ad revenue if they sell their own ad space, and 70% of the ad revenues if they leave it up to Facebook to sell the ad space through their own network.


2. Final Cut: Facebook is also allowing publishers to have total control over what content is created and how it is displayed. As Contently puts it, “In essence, publishers can use Facebook Instant Articles as an alternative platform to deliver a superior experience for their readers coming from Facebook – all without sacrificing ad revenue.”


3. Front and Center: Facebook is still running the show, of course, and thus will be in control of how visible these ads remain. Once again, though, the motivating factor for them is an improved user experience. Therefore, they’ll likely be doing everything in their power to make the content publishers create appear early and often in users’ News Feeds, so as to satisfy the promises made in those agreements and also give users easy access to quality, visually stimulating content.

BuzzFeed is the publishing outlet widely deemed to be the most primed to succeed with the new format. Because their brand is built around engaging with content in shorter intervals with unique formats (quizzes, lists, etc.), the Instant Article platform will suit them well. Facebook has already assured them that Instant Articles will be a suitable platform for their varied approach to displaying and sharing content.

Publishers shouldn’t be the only group excited about this development, though. Advertisers should be making very careful note of how ad space will function with these tools. Whether buying ad space from the publishers directly or from Facebook (which, once again, would mean Facebook would get to keep 30% of those ad revenues), marketers and ad agencies should be salivating at the thought of these highly engaging and visible plots of digital real estate.

As Marketing Land points out, it’s becoming less and less common for publishers (no matter how large) to have large sales teams. Because of this, we may see publishers opt for the indirect advertising method, in which Facebook would be in control of the ad inventory. The 30% decrease in revenue collection could be potentially made up for by the ability to take advantage of Facebook’s advanced targeting methods. Also, marketers will be able to benefit from a new, “no-nonsense means of serving more trackable, targeted ads across high-value media properties.” In other words, marketers will benefit immensely from yet another innovative and highly specific method of targeting audiences through Facebook.

Formatting

In terms of formatting, the ads will have certain restrictions. Facebook has posted the following specifications for Instant Article ad units:

• 1 large banner ad, sized 320×250 or 300×250 pixels – or – 2 small banners sized 320×50 or 300×50 pixels for every 500 words of content


• A maximum of 4 total ads per article, and a maximum of 2 small banners per article.


• All articles are allowed to have at least one ad, regardless of the length.


• Publishers may include no more than one house ad per article.


• No ads may be placed “above the fold” on the first view of the article.


• Publishers may not include ads in autoplay videos embedded in their articles, although ads in third-party video players are allowed

It’s interesting to see these specifications as a window into the way Facebook sees themselves benefiting from these instant articles. It all comes down to user experience. So, when users are scrolling down their News Feeds and are confronted with an Instant Article, Facebook ensures that the ads included won’t be the first visible element. Also, they ensure that the ads will be useful, not merely a way for publishers to shill their content, at least not more than once per article. As consistency is part of the foundation on which UX is built, Facebook is making sure that videos aren’t preceded by ads. Since it’s asking more of a user to sit through a video than it is to simply see a written blurb, Facebook knows that this last specification will make the user more willing to engage with the high-quality video content.

Recap

Because it’s still such a new advertising platform, it will take some time to develop useful results metrics and best practices guidelines. Already though, ad space on Instant Articles is signaling a dramatic change in the way publishers and advertisers digitally interact. Ultimately, if Facebook doesn’t go back on the concessions made to publishers so far, (this is possible, of course, as Facebook can essentially do whatever it wants) the ability to advertise on Instant Articles represents huge brand building opportunities. Users will be met with Instant Articles in a highly visible (the format is exclusively mobile) and high quality (the examples so far are visually rich, easy to engage with, and varied in subject matter) content. How this changes in the future remains to be seen, but marketers, advertisers, and business alike should all be taking careful note of how it all shakes out.

A Friendly Giant: How Facebook is Using Instant Articles to Woo Publishers - Business 2 Community

Aetna aims for LGBT community with targeted marketing test

By

Associated Press

Published:

16:24 GMT, 7 April 2015


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Updated:

16:24 GMT, 7 April 2015

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Aetna is urging gay customers to “be proud” — and consider buying its coverage — as part of a new, narrow focus to selling health insurance in a business where the individual’s buying decision matters more than it used to.




The nation’s third-largest health insurer is using mobile phone apps, print ads and a recently launched website to appeal to the estimated 9 million members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the United States. Its website features a video of a gay woman and man talking about love and relationships. It also helps visitors find LGBT-friendly doctors and promises coverage “with features that fit you, your partner and your family.”




Experts say changes in technology and how insurance is sold, plus a more fickle customer who wants to know where companies stand on certain issues, all create fertile ground for such a targeted approach. But this push comes with the risk of turning off customers who don’t agree with a company’s stance.




“You have to differentiate on who you are and what you stand for, and that’s trickier,” said Allen Adamson, chairman of North American business for the branding firm Landor Associates. “Not everyone’s going to like you.”




Aetna has offered help finding LGBT-friendly providers for years, and it has long backed issues like domestic partner coverage, all of which it details on its new website. The insurer decided to package this into a marketing push after talking to its employees, who pointed out that the LGBT community shows loyalty to companies that favor its inclusion. The company decided to test market to that community as a way to learn more about selling to specific demographic groups, President Karen Rohan said.




“This is a pilot for us to really understand how people are making choices and how people are thinking about purchasing health care,” she said.




Health insurers have become more focused on what individuals think over the past few years because more people are making decisions about which insurance to buy, instead of just having their employer do it for them. The health care overhaul has launched public insurance exchanges across the country where millions of customers sort through several options before settling on a plan.




Those are very competitive markets that require insurers to sell themselves to individuals, because it is relatively easy to compare plans and services, said Vishnu Lekraj, a Morningstar analyst who covers the insurance industry.




In addition to that, more individuals are sifting every fall among options for privately run Medicare Advantage plans, which provide coverage for people who are over 65 or disabled.




Medicare Advantage plans and those exchanges are two key sources of future growth for insurers, Lekraj said.




Technology also makes such targeted marketing easier. The Internet offers Aetna a way to reach LGBT customers who may be searching for companies friendly to their community. It’s a segmented marketing approach Adamson is starting to see more.




“The days of one message and one story for everybody are dwindling,” he said.




Another insurer, Kaiser Permanente, has operated a website similar to Aetna’s for several years, and a number of companies have run marketing campaigns specifically targeting the LGBT community.




Companies are trying to keep pace with evolving views as the public becomes more supportive and accepting of gay rights, said Laura Ries, president of the marketing strategy firm Ries & Ries.




“I think companies are realizing this, and they’re following the dollars,” she said. “This is a community that also has a lot of disposable income.”




Aetna’s Rohan doesn’t expect customer backlash from this particular focus.




“I think people generally are supportive of diversity and inclusion,” she said.




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Online: http://aet.na/1xzNknm




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Aetna aims for LGBT community with targeted marketing test

The Future of Marketing is Community

Much has been said in recent years about communities: what they are, how marketers can benefit from them, and how they’ll change in the future. Today’s marketers already know that online communities are important, which is a big reason why 80% of SMB’s are using social media networks to drive growth (Go-Gulf, 2014).

It’s crucial to understand, however, that creating a community means much more than just posting funny animal pictures to social media followers or tweeting about how awesome you are.

Let’s take a look at how the idea of a community has developed over time, how the best brands are building communities, and what marketers can do to make the new community concept work for them.

Communities Past & Present

In older times, the idea of a community was governed mostly by your location. Your community was the group of people who grew up around you, attended the same school, or went to work with you.

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The advent of digital communication has changed all that. Thanks to the Internet, people can establish communities with others who are across the street or across the globe. People can now join communities for almost any niche, interest, or goal, even if there’s no one around them with the same passions. Interested in Civil War reenactments? Join the Civil War Reenactment HQ and find an event nearby. Got a thing for cricket? Find a community to discuss strategies, match scores, and the latest player stories.

In a nutshell, this means that communities today are created more deliberately than they were in the past. As a result, communities have the potential to be much more engaging, because they are based on how people identify themselves, not who sits in the cubicle next to them. There are few things that people are more attached to than the fundamental ways they identify themselves: father, daughter, writer, marketer, baseball fan, and so on.

The Many Flavors of Online Communities

This change in the dynamic of communities can be observed in a microcosm on some of the more popular social networks. Take Facebook, for example. Like the real world, Facebook has a lot of people: 1.39 billion per month as of January 2015, to be exact (Search Engine Journal). Within that population, smaller communities exist: groups based on occupation, special interests, and etc. The same idea holds true for LinkedIn: the creation of industry groups, company pages, and discussion threads means that people can pick and choose which communities within a larger population that they want to be a part of.

This information is all great and interesting enough on its own, but what does it mean for marketers? Some of the most forward-thinking brands are already applying this new community concept in their marketing efforts.

How Marketers Should Leverage Communities

Savvy businesses understand that the old days of outbound, product-centric marketing messages are behind us. The focus now is on building relationships with customers and prospects by providing them with value.

The most effective marketers, however, are taking this idea one step further: they are making connections with customers and allowing their customers to create connections with one another.

Nike is one great example: in 2010, the sports giant created Digital Sport, an in-house marketing department designed to make sure that Nike could properly engage its community of customers and prospects. Today, Nike’s main Facebook page has nearly 23 million likes. They’ve also segmented their brand down into different units, creating communities for Nike retail stores, Nike Skateboarding, Nike Football, and so on. Outside of social media, companies like Microsoft and IBM have done an excellent job of establishing their own user communities, where customers can share insights and help each other solve problems.

We can even find examples of brands building customer communities outside of the digital world. Popular inbound marketing company HubSpot, for example, created HubSpot User Groups (HUGS) to promote real-world discussions of their marketing platform. Although HubSpot provides financial assistance and advice for these meetups, the scheduling, structure, and content of group meetings are all handled by group leaders, who are actual HubSpot customers, not company employees.

Key Takeaway: The best marketers don’t just add value for prospects and customers: they make them feel like they are a part of something. The future of marketing is not just providing valuable content to help people connect with your company, but establishing communities where people can come together to share their stories and connect with other people.

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Author: Bryan Kramer

Bryan Kramer is President/CEO of PureMatter a full service marketing agency in Silicon Valley, consultant, blogger, speaker, and marketing strategist. All opinions are my own…. View full profile ›

The Future of Marketing is Community

Turning Likes Into Leads: Converting Your Social Community

2014 was somewhat of a breakthrough year for B2B social media marketing. Despite toiling away at what we were certain could be a great business asset since long before, efforts to generate tangible business returns from social media platforms and likes, paid or otherwise, had been largely unsuccessful.

So what changed?

Hubspot

Hubspot came to the forefront in 2014 and gave marketers a whole new level of real-time insight into all of their online activity, including social media. Detailed feedback on the effectiveness of individual tweets and paid social ads allowed marketers to take a more informed and strategic approach to the communications they were putting out through social channels.

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Landing Pages

Although dedicated landing pages have been around for donkey’s years, 2014 seemed to be the year that the penny finally dropped for B2B companies. User-friendly platforms like Unbounce, Hubspot and Optimizely have given marketers the ability to create and test landing pages for their paid ads, emails and social activity without the need for a web developer, thereby increasing adoption.

Paid Social

The acceptance of paid social, combined with the above factors, has played a significant part in the success of B2B social media marketing over the past 12 months. The targeting options available through advertising platforms such as Facebook and Linkedin allow business to hone in on their audiences with accuracy, and although these options have been around since before 2014, this was the year that paid social came into its own.

So now that we know social can deliver tangible returns for B2B companies, here are some key tips to maximise lead generation from social media marketing.

Gate valuable content

By now everyone has heard of content marketing (probably more times than you want) and most businesses understand its importance to SEO, social media and establishing authority. However, just because content serves as SEO fodder, doesn’t mean we should give it ALL away.

Useful, industry-specific content such as white papers, surveys, informative videos and presentations can be effective lead generation tools. By gating these assets (only allowing members of your audience to access the content if they provide contact details via a web form), you can capture valuable data from potential customers who have already hinted at an interest in your area of business.

Promoting these gated assets via social channels, email marketing and paid advertising will maximize your data capture opportunities.

2. Use Webinars

Webinars can be a lead generation gold mine. Not only do they allow you to capture data from those signalling an interest in your products or services by signing up to attend, they also give you an environment free from competitor noise, to talk exclusively about your offering to a captive audience.

Dedicated platforms like GoToWebinar provide data around how many people sat through the webinar and the stage at which others dropped out. It also gives attendees the opportunity to raise their hand to ask the host a question, and chat with fellow hosts throughout.

One of the most valuable tools allows the webinar host to include an interactive poll which can provide valuable data about the attendee’s reason for considering your product, thereby further qualifying the lead.

You could gain more social media exposure by promoting a hashtag at the start of the webinar and encouraging attendees to use it to submit their questions via Twitter.

Pro tip: Sync your activity with your CMS.

Syncing your social activity with your CRM tool allows you to track which social platforms your leads have come from, which tweets, posts or adverts your leads have responded to and ultimately, how much revenue each social platform is contributing.

Both Hubspot and Salesforce, the two most popular CRM tools, sync seamlessly with the major social platforms and provide free guidance on how to nurture your social leads.

Quantifying the financial contribution of social media marketing has long been a problem for marketers and many have abandoned activity altogether after seeing limited returns. However, this approach should ensure that your social activity’s contribution is accurately recognised and easy to report.

3. Use dedicated landing pages

Directing your social traffic to dedicated landing pages, created specifically to capture their details, rather than including a link to your key benefits page or similar, is far more likely to generate leads.

What’s even more likely to generate leads is continually testing and refining your landing pages to optimize their effectiveness.

As alluded to at the start of this post, there are a number of dedicated, user-friendly tools that allow you to create and edit slick looking landing pages with minimal effort. Even better, sync your landing pages with your CMS so your newly acquired leads are fed directly into your sales funnel to be nurtured by your Business Development team. Again, Hubspot contains all of this functionality out of the box. Salesforce doesn’t but it does integrate perfectly with Unbounce, one of the most user-friendly landing pages platforms.

What works for one business won’t necessarily work for all but having seen these tips work well for a number of clients, I’m confident that you will experience similar levels of success by implementing them.

Author: Business.com

Business.com and our market experts are extremely passionate about providing tips and practical advice in these main areas: leadership, sales, marketing, finance, HR, technology and entrepreneurship. Our mission is to help business owners and entrepreneurs acquire the knowledge, products and services to help you run and grow your business…. View full profile ›

Turning Likes Into Leads: Converting Your Social Community

Vermont Community Garden Network announces new board members

News Release — Vermont Community Garden Network
Jan. 20, 2015

Contact:
Jess Hyman, Executive Director
(802) 861-4769, [email protected]

BURLINGTON – The Vermont Community Garden Network is pleased to announce the addition of two new board members for 2015, Beth Cullen and Joe McHugh.

Cullen is the owner of Root Consulting, co-chairs the Vermont Farm to Plate Marketing and Consumer Education working group, and is the membership coordinator for Slow Food Vermont. McHugh is Director of Online Marketing at Gardener’s Supply Company, an avid gardener whose first garden was at the Rock Point Community Garden in Burlington, and a former member of the Richmond Planning and Conservation Commissions.

Cullen and McHugh join a talented board, which includes Erin Buckwalter of NOFA-VT, Donna Renaud of Wallace W Tapia, P.C., Grace Matiru of UVM Dept. of Community Development and Applied Economics and Dewey House for Civic Engagement, Daria Holcomb of Fletcher Allen Health Care, Fred Schmidt, Director Emeritus of the UVM Center for Rural Studies, Susan Stasny of Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, and Ryan Torres of the Greater Burlington YMCA.

Buckwalter is the new board president, replacing Kit Perkins who completed her service on the board in 2014 after helping lead the organization through a successful name change and statewide visioning process.

The Vermont Community Garden Network is a statewide non-profit dedicated to the growth and success of community and school gardens. VCGN provides training, technical assistance, resources, and networking opportunities for garden leaders across the state and hands-on garden education for youth and adults in Burlington. We believe in the power of growing food together to strengthen food security and build community!

Learn more at www.vcgn.org and join us on Facebook and Twitter at VTGardenNetwork.

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Vermont Community Garden Network announces new board members