Long story short, it is about “figuring it out.”

In the article, Beth talks about how GE “has been inspired by an ethos that we have witnessed in the world of social enterprise – the belief that if you hire smart people, they should be able to “figure it out.”

As managers, employers and business owners – do we hold the belief that smart people will figure everything out? I would hope… Yes! Smart people want to learn and drive towards creative innovation… no matter the industry or job. It is about figuring it out not waiting for the answer.

Beth continues, “As leaders and managers, we have to motivate our people to come up with workable solutions to problems that weren’t even on the radar when they were hired. There’s no operators manual for most of what we’ll ask people to work on. But somehow, together, we will figure it out.”

There is no operators manual for creative innovation.

The operators manual has always been fundamental to success (of any business) but taking (and understanding) action is even more important now… than ever before. The two work hand-in-hand. We focus time and energy on education and training at the beginning of a job…. when the failure is in our inability to educate an individual on the importance of fluid change both personally and professionally.

Creative training is the fundamental idea that educational development of any employee grows with their ability to act on impulse and with certainty based on changes within an economy, country, product or company.

In the marketing world, we can no longer build success by conforming to rules and educational standards. It is important that we move, act, and learn with the changing world… without stopping and watching.

Because if you stand and watch… make excuses… you die.

When a client wants to increase their Facebook community size I start by asking the ever-important question, “why?” The answer to this question helps me gauge how much educating I’ll need to do early on.

For example, the way I approach a client who answers “because my son/daughter/cousin/Uncle Bob says I need to do this Facebook thing” is vastly different than the way I approach a client who says, “I want to generate more sales for my online shop. My target audience is made up of career women between the ages of 25 and 39 so this seems like a good fit.”

After I know why a client wants to grow their Facebook community, I can begin pulling together a strategy. Most of the time this strategy includes (but is not limited to) running a Facebook Ad campaign that will help generate more “likes.”

Using Facebook Ads to Increase ‘Likes’

Facebook ad campaigns that have the goal of increasing your number of “likes” or community size are charged on a CPM basis. CPM stands for Cost per Thousand views. That means your account will be charged a certain fee every time a thousand people see it.

The amount you are charged per thousand views is based on a bidding process (you bid against other companies and the highest bid wins the ability to have their ad shown at any given time). You can set your max bid to whatever you want it to be.

When it comes to setting your targeting parameters you have a variety of really helpful options to ensure you’re reaching the right people for your business.

Here are just some of the ways that you can target your Facebook ads:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Relationship status
• Language
• Education
• Workplace

This type of targeting not only gives you the ability to reach a much more precise group of people than Google Ads, but also the ability to grow your community and extend the value of the ad by re-marketing to the people who “like” your page over the months and years ahead.

A Real World Example:

One particular client of mine is in the health & wellness industry. Their product and services can be described as intended for an audience that can afford luxury goods.

On a daily basis the company posts healthy food tips and recipes from their award-winning executive chef. These recipes can be made with ingredients you can find in your local grocery store – nothing fancy needed. This means the average person, even if he or she isn’t yet a customer, can benefit from the recipes.

Additionally, the tips they post about are ones that anyone can benefit from as well. For example, one of their recent posts said:

DID YOU KNOW: For the same number of calories that are in a handful of peanuts you can eat 2 and ½ pounds of strawberries!

As such, this is what one of their Facebook ads looks like:

The ads are only targeted at the top 25 richest zip codes in the United States (since their ideal customer is affluent) who have indicated they are interested in health and wellness related topics. Other targeting parameters are also put into place on these ads such as age restrictions and so on.

These type of ads have helped my client grow their Facebook community from around 3,000 likes to almost 10,000 likes in a matter of months.

Additionally, engagement with their Facebook posts has skyrocketed along with community growth (over 170% increase) and they are seeing a steady stream of new leads from Facebook.

You could grow your Facebook community faster or slower using Facebook ads depending on your budget, size of your target audience and responsiveness to the ads.

How is This Different Than Buying Likes on Fiverr?

Some people ask me, “isn’t this the same as buying likes from Fiverr?” and my answer is a resounding: heck no!

When you buy likes from companies that sell on platforms like Fiverr you’re often buying fake accounts. Not only that, but even if the person selling tells you that your likes will be targeted to your industry, don’t expect that to be true.

You are getting what you pay for. You are spending $5 and will be getting a bunch of junk likes that Facebook will probably strip away the next time they do a mass purging of fake accounts.

When you run a Facebook ad campaign targeted at generating more likes, you are able to target your ideal audience.  You will reach real people with real Facebook accounts who are really expressing an interest in your industry.

Of course, all of this is as much a waste of money as buying your likes on Fiverr if you don’t have a strategy in place to nurture and convert those people over time. That’s a whole different beast though, which I will cover in my next post!

This post was written by Kristina Allen, head of social marketing at an ad agency in Miami, FL. You can follow her on Twitter @allenkristina. 

I’m presenting at 2:15 pm on Monday. Link to all the information. Below you will find my deck. It is what we call a “crack presentation.” 100 + slides in 30-45 minutes. Enjoy and I hope to see you out in San Diego next week!

I personally love using hashtags. On Twitter I follow mostly professional tags like:

• #CRO – tweets about conversion rate optimization
• #SEO – tweets about search engine optimization
• #SocBiz – tweets about managing a social business
• #RunChat – tweets about running optimization (hah! But seriously…)

On Instagram I tend to turn into an old cat lady and only follow my friends and #CatsofInstagram, but on Pinterest my range spreads out to things like #recipes, #TravelDestinations and #running (yes, I love running).

Nike Ad on Pinterest: My Sport is Your Sport’s Punishment #running #runner

On Facebook I follow various sites, brands, products and famous persons related to my interests.

How Facebook Hashtags Might Work

It’s currently being speculated that Facebook users and marketers would use hashtags to follow live events the way that people currently use Twitter.

For example, when a show like the Grammy’s goes live everyone tweets their thoughts using hashtag #Grammys (or whatever the case may be). If Facebook introduces hashtags, fans could follow live events from the comfort of their own Facebook account where they spend much of the day anyway.

This is a big deal to brands since Facebook hosts far more users than any other social network – including Twitter.

Why Marketers Should Be Excited About Facebook Hashtags

Simply put, marketers should be excited about Facebook hashtags because more customers are on Facebook than any other network.

Twitter is a great channel for reaching African-American adults between 18 and 29 who live in urban areas, according to data from Pew Research; however, if you are interested in targeting users outside of that demographic (with hashtags), you’ll probably want to use Facebook.

When we look at social media usage the numbers go as follows:

• 67% use Facebook
• 15% use Twitter
• 15% use Pinterest
• 13% use Instagram
• 6% use Tumblr

By promoting your brand or live event on Facebook through hashtags you’ll be able to (potentially) reach a much broader audience. That’s usually an upside when choosing a marketing channel.

Facebook Hashtags and Privacy

I don’t think the introduction of Facebook hashtags is in any way a Twitter Killer.

Most Twitter profiles are public therefore we tweet with the expectation that others will see our messages. However, many of us keep our Facebook updates locked down to just friends.

While hashtags will make searching for topics easier in Facebook’s graph search, there may be some hesitancy from users to start making their updates public.

We’ll just have to wait and see how Facebook is going to handle displaying hashtags before making any changes to our privacy settings.

Are you excited for Facebook hashtags? Would you rather follow live events on Facebook or on Twitter? 

——–

This post was written by Kristina Allen, head of social marketing at an ad agency in Miami, FL. You can follow her on Twitter @allenkristina. 

Does this kind of behavior really have any impact? A friend of Jay’s told him, regarding the meme, ”Jay, it is literally the LEAST you can do.” We don’t say that to dismiss the people who made the change. But we wonder, what percentage of those people who changed their avatar actually wrote their legislator?

No… really… who wrote their legislator?

Malcolm Gladwell has leveled this type of critiscm at social media. He states that social media does not create movements because the ties are so weak and fragile. We all have to look at ourselves and say, “Why are we doing this? To make a difference or to make sure our friends and connections think differently about us?”

Check out the video to learn from Andrea and optimize your marketing to be delivered to the mobile device in the right format!

Also, feel free to download our white paper – Designing for the Mobile Inbox

This deck is from an infographic produced by ExactTarget, Marketing Tech Blog, and Compendium. It features the leading stats for mobile connectivity and usage in the United States and abroad.