Okay, here we go, trying to blog while listening to Facebook live webinar

Agenda

• What are sponsored stories?
• How do they work?
• Best Practices

Pages

• Pages are like your ‘mission control’ for facebook marketing. Engage customers with relevant content
• ‘Word of mouth at scale’ – (I love this idea)
• 1.6x lift in brand recall if friends of your friends recommend products

How do Sponsored Ads Work?

• post shown to fans and friends of fans
• Boost distribution of your posts
• Promoted not only on right side, pinned, but now in feed and great for mobile users
• Sponsor your most important and compelling posts to more fans
• up to 3-5x increase in reach for your posts
• Types of Sponsored Stories:
• can use pretty much any FB ‘object’ or content as a story

How to manage sponsored ads

• social reach – how many friends of fans saw your post

Summary

Questions

• which users see sponsored stories:
• those who would have seen that post ‘organically’
• Stories appear in right column, in news feed and mobile
• Targeting:
• use the ‘connection’ targeting feature!
• Best ideas for sponsored stories:
• special offers
• look at analytics for what posts are working and then use those

1. profile picture on new facebook pages is super important
2. You can change the order of your page’s views by using the edit feature
3. You cant use the tabs feature any more with the new view
4. You can also pin a post for seven days to the top of your feed
5. Milestones
• new store opening
• new employees
• used for highlighting important events
• by default are starred and take up full width of page
6. Starring posts – different from pinning posts – makes them full screen
7. You can hide or delete posts or even change the date of a post
8. There is a new admin panel
9. There is now a messages area now so people/customers can have a one on one discussion with you

Question Period:

This is important to businesses, because EdgeRank means that all of your followers may not hear what you have to say every time. It controls the Reach of your message. Anyone familiar with traditional marketing understands the importance of Reach. To social media marketers, this means that the large follower base you have worked hard to build will not be as effective if you are not sharing interesting content.

While the exact math behind EdgeRank is unknown, we know at least three factors play into it: affinity score between the content creator and the user, weight for the type of content shared, and a time decay factor.

The affinity score measures how connected a particular user is to the content being shared. The more someone interacts with your Facebook page, the more times they like or share your content, the higher their affinity score.

The weight is determined largely upon the type of content. A comment is more valuable than a like. Sharing a photo is going to give a higher weight than sharing a brief piece of text. Again, the exact values are unknown, but photos, videos, and status updates are likely the most popular types of content in that order.

Finally, the time decay factor simply determines how fast a piece of content fades away. Because of this factor, the EdgeRank of a single post is not going to be constant, but slowly going down.

What does this mean for your social media account?

Your content should be engaging. It should elicit interaction from your followers. Simply posting links, or sharing trivial information in order to constantly have your name in front of your followers is going to hurt your Reach over time. Keep these in mind when interacting on Facebook:

• Share photos and videos often
• Encourage your followers to interact; a great way to do this is to ask questions, or end a post with “what do you guys think about this?”
• Interact with followers in the comments
• Know when your fans are online – with time decay, they may never see the post you make at 3AM (unless you run a business for college kids!)
• Don’t constantly self promote your business
• Monitor your reach – each post tells you how many people were reached
• Find out what works best with your followers – you might find that they prefer videos or links to photos, or like to hear daily specials at your restaurant

Okay, here I am once again, live blogging. This time, listening to the webinar by Google about their Google+ for business pages. Coincidentally, on the same day I finished up a series of webinars on Facebook for Business…..

Google Plus update

• over 40M users
• Billions of items shared daily
• +1 buttons on over 1M sites

Get closer to your customers

• real conversations with right people (circles)
• inspire customers to recommend new ones
• improve performance of your ads

Three Steps to Create Business Google+ Page

How to Create Google+ Page

1. Log into your Gmail account
2. Head to your google+ stream
3. Create Google + page – pick category
4. Get word out
5. Link your page
1. paste widget badge code on your website

Example Creative Business + Pages

Example Google+ page from Carnival Cruise Lines:

Example Android Page:

• Slice your image using online tools: gpluspic.com/banner – not quite sure what this is useful for…
• link to share your page on google + on adwords – ability to link your Google+ page to your adwords advertising

Segment your audience using Circles

• business circle examples: customers, buyers, staff
• Stone house coffee example segmented circles:
• Early risers – before 8 am 10% off
• Study Groups – people who love to study while drinking coffee – “how to have a great study group while drinking coffee”
• Intel:
• “which circle are you?

Intel - circle example

Hangouts

build more personal relationships

• “learn how to make Latte coffee at 10 am? live hangout for customers
• Black eyed peas held a live video hangout with their circle before concert in NYC

Google+ hangout example for Coffee Shop

Pro Tips

Promotion

1. add the G+ badge to your site – users can follow you from within your site without having to visit your G+ page
2. Direct Connect feature from within Google Search

Google+ Direct Connect example - searcher adds a '+' operator

+1 Button

• users can endorse your brand or content
• shows on their Google+ stream
• Google ‘ties’ +1s together
• g+ page
• search
• mobile
• display
• video
• sites
• Google will surface all these social endorsements when they are relevant

How the Google+ button works

Tying all your +1 social annotations together

Pro Tips

Analytics

• adwords
• Webmaster
• Google + reporting – Google+ ripples
• learn who your advocates are how your posts are shared, which content works best

Cool integration of Google+ data with Google AdWords

And you will be able to see social influence within your Google Webmaster account also!

Google+ and Webmaster Data

Here is the coolest reporting yet – native report within Google+ called “Google Ripples…”

Google+ Ripples Report

Pro Tips

1. use search on Google+ to find out brand mentions
2. encourage customers to use hashtags
3. check adwords performance to see how +1′s are affecting your campaigns, webmaster data
4. Adapt your strategy, be flexible – things move quick on social, be nimble, flexible

“Make your business more engaging with social technology”

I am live blogging while listening to the final Facebook webinar within their “Bootcamp for Business” series…

• This webinar is about using social technology to drive business growth
• talked about pages and ads, now final piece: social technology - social plug ins and apps

Social Plug-ins

1. Like button for products or articles on your page - best if you have a significant audience on site
2. Send button – send content from site to your friends
3. comments – lets users comment on a piece of content on your site
4. like box – allows users to like your page from website
5. registration plug in

Apps

• more engaging but more complex, can be on your page, on mobile devices or your web site
• every time app engaged, it creates a story and shows on users news feed
• Does it make sense for your business?
• do you have an audience already?
• do you have budget to both build it and promote it: 80% for promotion!
• do people already engage with your business? if so, build app around that

How to Create winning apps

I am live blogging while watching a Facebook webinar on their Facebook Insights and Optimization Facebook tool sets. Hopefully this will help me remember this information a bit better -

Facebook optimization is both science and art.  Here are key tips:

Creative

• questions drive engagement in title or body – use questions or offer
• keep body copy concise, short and clear – use landing page for details
• create sense of urgency – buy now
• How often to refresh creative in ads – watch engagement metrics, when it drops then refresh
• ad performance degrading after 7-10 days is pretty normal – refresh!

Discounts and free offers

Segment and structure campaigns clearly

Quality Score is important because it directly impacts your Ad Rank, whether your ad is eligible to be shown for a specific search query, and your actual Cost Per Click. In other words, Quality Score has a huge influence on not only when and where your ads are shown, but also how much you pay for the traffic.

Google is very open about how Quality Score is calculated. Although some factors are still proprietary, they tell us most of the inputs.

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google; note that CTR on the Google Network only ever impacts Quality Score on the Google Network – not on Google
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown

Quality Score directly influences how much you spend for a click. For each auction (an auction occurs for every search query), the ads all are assigned an Ad Rank. The Ad Rank is a product of the Max CPC Bid of the ad and the Quality Score.

Ad Rank = CPC Bid x Quality Score

The Ad Ranks are exactly what they sound: a number assigned to your ad that determines where your ad is ranked. This is how Quality Score fits into the equation of where your ad is positioned.

A better Quality Score also means that you will spend less for the same number of clicks. The Actual Cost Per Click that you pay is determined as follows:

Actual CPC = (Ad Rank to Beat / Quality Score) + $0.01

The easiest way to understand all the equations is to look at an example. Let’s assume that you are competing for an ad spot with one other competitor. You have dedicated a lot of time to improving your Quality Score, while they have ignored it.

Even though the competitor has a CPC bid higher than yours, the difference in Quality Score means your Ad Rank is higher and thus your ad is positioned higher. (Ad Rank = Max CPC x Quality Score) Also, the higher Quality Score means the ad costs less. If, for example, your Quality Score was only 9 the Actual CPC would be 16 / 9 + $0.01, or $1.79.

While many people forget about Quality Score, it really is an important metric to consider when optimizing paid search campaigns.

1. Earn authentic tweets, likes, shares, etc.
2. Become a Content Portal – Publish unique research, informed opinions, insights on trends or news, multimedia, expert contributors, quality discussions
3. Invest into video content (it’s not competitive right now!)
4. Build awesome infographics & visual media
5. Build calculators, tools, web based software; engineering stuff that saves people time or money
6. Publish reference worthy research
7. Leverage current events & news in your content.
8. Find amazing designers & pay them. Great designs are liked more by visitors. (Expert Tip: Go to a CSS gallery and find a featured designer with only 1 submission. Likely he is just starting out or doing it on the side, so he will charge less.)
9. Be cautious with ad placement.
10. Compare how you format text blocks with Panda Update losers.
11. Build robust About Us pages. Include real people with real photos, links to social media profiles, what your business does and the why and how, real contact info for real people, and non-generic descriptions. Include a press kit with logos, images, branding material – people do look for these.
12. Use real contact details and real people on your website.
13. Earn & display testimonials. Give testimonials to others (this will often get you a link). Used LinkedIn for this.
14. Optimize your conversion funnel.
15. Satisfy the user’s search query. Ask them what they were looking for or want. Ask them what would prompt them to share the page.
16. Register your business and address, even if you are not a local business. This is a huge signal of authenticity.
17. Build authentic social profiles with your business name.
18. Earn branded search traffic. Google probably looks at this. Tweet or share links to searches for your brand.
19. Diversify your traffic sources.
20. Get your brand name in headlines. If someone has written about you in the past, or written about something related to your business, ask them to cover you now.
21. Hard to get links are often the best links.
22. File patents, fund research, publish a paper in a college journal.
23. Create content about social sites – they love to stoke their own egos.
24. Get a great design, then list it on CSS galleries and design inspiration galleries. There are hundreds of these.
25. Find where big brands get links.
26. Find where relevant pages on .edu, .gov, or .org get links.
27. Investigate brand “sention” sources. Search [brand -brand.com].
28. Get key bloggers, connectors, and news sites aware of your brand.
29. Host, sponsor, and attend events and meetups.
30. Earn citations on industry portals, forums, discussion boards.
31. Get your brand included on industry brand lists.
32. Seek properties operated by trusted entities.
33. Use your bio / profile as a link accumulator.
34. Use RSS feeds with full content and absolute URLs to your website.

Check them out!

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