Sounds pretty good! It is heartening to see Facebook consulting with the industry prior to launching Facebook News. It is also encouraging to learn that a human editorial team will be prescreening the Today’s Stories section — something that the long-gone Trending tab (often populated by inflammatory clickbait) sorely lacked.

Facebook News was built to bring people closer to the stories that affect their lives… We hope this work aids in our effort to sustain great journalism and strengthen democracy.

Facebook Newsroom

That sounds nice, but with recent blowouts of public trust, it will take a lot to convince the audience that Facebook truly has its users’ best interests in mind. The claim of “strengthening democracy” is a bold one indeed.

Facebook News will roll out gradually to a subset of users in the U.S.

The post Facebook Announces Facebook News appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

It was disorienting even then. No cover photos, no custom URLs, absolutely no post boosts. There was a WALL. And thumbs up icons for likes. The very idea of having a page for a private company, not a celebrity or a soccer club, was new!

Today, every business needs to be on Facebook, but small business owners feel just as lost as I did back in 2011. The platform keeps evolving at a lightning speed. Do you feel like you can’t keep up so you delay getting started? I sure do know the feeling.

Odds are your competitors are on Facebook. If you still have not jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, you’ve probably been plagued by equal parts FOMO and arguing that your business does not need it 🤔

Do small businesses need social media anyway?

The truth is, yes. For branding. Trust. Recognition. A platform to share. These are valuable things that social media presence provides for businesses of all sizes, even those with no deep pockets.

Yes, there are considerations on how to choose a social media platform. Yes, your target audience may not be hanging out on Facebook exclusively. But if your business needs a social media plan of action, Facebook, being the largest and the most versatile of platforms, is an obvious choice to get you started.

There are a couple of reasons why Facebook, in particular, is good for business.

• It offers you opportunities to build a beautiful communications stream with a narrative that you control.
• It gives your customers an easy way to reach you that may be less stressful for them ☎️
• An active Facebook page shows prospective customers that your business is active and striving, so visiting your page may seal the deal. (This has been demonstrated time and again with my clients — the number of inquiries and calls shot up after they revived their Facebook pages.)
• Brand building will accelerate. If your business is new, brand evolution is inevitable and posting on Facebook may help.
• You will get to know your customers. Connect with them; learn about them; serve them better as a result.

But only if you put in the work! 💪

Getting Started with the Basics

Facebook business page set up is straightforward. Remember a few things:

• You need to have a personal Facebook profile to create a business page.
• Your name will not be shown anywhere in connection to the page unless you choose to add yourself as a Team Member.
• You do not need a second profile “for business purposes” — that’s against Facebook Community Standards.
• Do not use your profile to promote your business, as very useful marketing functionality such as Facebook Insights is available only to pages.

Detailed instructions on how to complete the setup of your Facebook business page are here.

All done? Great! Now you need to come up with a plan.

Kate Smalley, a marketing communications consultant specializing in fintech and finance (not the easiest industries to market!) does not mince words about going in blind.

Posting into the ether doesn’t work.

You need to start by thinking through what your page is for… [and] who it’s for.

Kate Smalley, www.katesmalley.com

Having an idea of what you want to say and to which audience is enough at the very beginning. But do sketch it out once your page is created, so you aren’t posting random things just for the sake of “Social Media Presence”.

Posting on Facebook

Posting on Facebook is easy (sometimes too easy), but there are a couple of differences between posting as yourself on your personal feed and as your business on your business page.

All posts will be attributed to the page by default. It means that you should decide in advance on the language and tone you are going to use when putting updates onto your page. More specifically, settle on “I” vs “we” and stick to it.

Posting on Facebook as a beginner may seem intimidating because of all the post options and buttons available to you. Depending on your business type, you will use some of the features more than others. Attaching photos and videos, tagging products, adding a message button and a poll are among the most highly used functions for business owners getting started with their Facebook pages. 👇

Here is the full list for reference.

• Photo/Video — attaches a photo or video to the post. You can add multiples.
• Feeling/Activity — automatically ads a line “Feeling/Doing XYZ” to the post, like “Feeling determined”.
• Tag Product — available if you have an e-commerce store connected to your Facebook page, allowing you to tag products you sell in the post.
• Support Nonprofit — adds a donation button.
• Advertise Your Business — opens up options to boost the post.
• Get Messages — adds a neat “Send message” button below your post.
• Check in — adds the chosen location to your post.
• Poll — allows you to create a simple 2-option poll within your post.
• Watch party — gives you an option to host a screening of a publicly available video and for viewers to add comments as they watch.

Post Drafts and Scheduling

Posting as a page, you also have an option to schedule or save your post to drafts. Drafts are great for seeing how different media (photos, galleries, videos, maps) will look with the post — in fact, I recommend always saving your posts to draft first to make sure they look their best.

Scheduling is highly useful when you want to space out your communications. Learning how to schedule is one of the first skills you may want to master on Facebook, according to Emily Hessney Lynch, a social media strategist and the founder of digital agency Serve Me the Sky Digital:

Early on I learned scheduling content in advance & having a plan is important. Otherwise you’ll post weaker content on the fly or forget to post.

Emily Hessney Lynch, Serve Me the Sky

Notice how Emily mentions having a plan as well? Yes, that’s not going to change. Planning ahead will serve you well. I don’t make the rules.

Facebook Insights

Once you get the hang of publishing updates to the page and start accumulating some followers, turn your attention to Facebook Insights — it has valuable data on how your page is doing and how you can make it better.

Key metrics are all given space on the Insights dashboard:

• Page views, previews, likes, followers;
• Post reach and story reach;
• Post engagements;
• Recommendations (previously Reviews);
• Responsiveness of your page to messages.

Each of the metrics above can be explored in more depth in its own tab in Facebook Insights. As a Facebook beginner, you may find yourself visiting the tab for Posts the most often, because it shows you the performance of each post compared to all the others you’ve recently made. This helps you make decisions on which post types to prioritize.

Video used to be cited as the best performing medium on Facebook, however, it’s not all black and white. You may find that your page followers engage more with photos or click on relevant links more often.

But how do I grow my page to get to know my audience? — you may ask. Where do I get this audience?

Marketing Your Page on Facebook

Marketing on Facebook isn’t as easy as some blog posts would lead you to believe. And the truth is, depending on your line of business, it may be significantly harder or, rarely, significantly easier to grow your following.

When I first started marketing on Facebook for my then-company, it was as easy as inviting my friends to like the page and ask them to share a few posts. Post reach was in double digits. Photos did the trick. We, marketers, loved it… until it was over.

Depending on your line of business, it may be significantly harder or, rarely, significantly easier to grow your following.

Facebook doesn’t like organic reach very much anymore because they want your advertising dollars. “Pay to play” is a common phrase when describing Facebook today. If you do not want to pay, you will have to be very patient and consistent with your efforts. (If you do want to pay, then know what you’re paying for and probably don’t pay for vanity numbers like page followers, mmkay?)

One of my clients is a travel guide and for them, it is so easy to grow it’s ridiculous. Because who doesn’t like a nice photo of a beach or a mountain shot in their timeline? Page likes practically fall on them. Post shares are a regular thing.

On the other hand, another client with a health practice has to fight tooth and nail for each new follower. They run promos, give out freebies, engage in Facebook groups. It is all good effort for them that builds brand recognition, but it’s not EASY.

Is a travel website an inherently better business than a health centre? Of course not. It’s just the nature of Facebook marketing. Your business is unique and so your mileage will vary. You will succeed if you put in the effort, but this effort may take a while. So make sure it counts!

#1: Focus on being useful

Make it your motto to create a meaningful info channel for your customers. Forget the number of likes and follows — focus on being useful.

Check out these great examples below 👇

#2: Continuous engagement is key

Settle on a posting schedule, just like Emily suggests above. Make sure you have enough content and/or creativity to deliver week after week, month after month. If you skip a day on an occasional week, it’s fine, but don’t go weeks without posts — maintain your presence.

Monitor Insights for post ideas to diversify your content. Experiment with image galleries, collages, simple polls or even contests.

#3: Join Facebook groups

Search for relevant groups to join as your page. Since some groups now allow pages to join as members, engaging participants in other groups is now easier.

FB groups are a great option if they make sense for your biz! Good way to build community.

Emily Hessney Lynch, www.servemethesky.com

When participating in groups, do not, and I repeat, do not make it about your business at all, unless directly asked. This is not fun for others. Focus on providing information, advice or praise. Monitor the groups continuously and be patient.

#4 Monitor page messages

Reply to your page messages as quickly as you can. A high response rate delivered quickly enough will activate the green badge of response time that will encourage people to reach out to your page.

#5 Play nice

Does it even need to be said?

• Do not steal content or assets.
• Avoid repost without permission (Facebook post shares are okay since they credit the creator).
• Never use images you have no rights to use (plenty of high-quality stock is now free).
• Do not air grievances with customers in your posts — that’s gross and unprofessional no matter how in the wrong they are.

And just keep going. You got this.

What Next?

Now that you have all you need to know to absolutely nail it on Facebook for your business, it is time to put it into practice! And once you do, don’t be surprised when you start wondering if you should get on board with Facebook Ads too… and Business Manager… The journey is neverending.

Thanks for reading!

The post Facebook for Small Business: A 2019 Starter Guide appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

The metrics in question are:

1. Relevance Score (replaced by a new metric set of Quality Ranking, Engagement Rate Ranking, and Conversion Rate Ranking)
2. Offers Saved and Cost Per Offers Saved (replaced by Post Saves)
3. Messaging Replies and Cost per Messaging Reply (replaced by New Messaging Connections and Messaging Conversations Started)
4. Mobile App Purchase ROAS and Web Purchase ROAS (consolidated into Purchase ROAS)

Different advertisers may feel the loss of the above more acutely. Some may not miss them at all. For our clients, Relevance Score stood out as a handy number that was easy to understand. However, it was not always accurate and definitely never reflected the full picture. It would be good to see how Quality Ranking, Engagement Rate Ranking, and Conversion Rate Ranking will fare in this regard.

Broadening the Offers Saved metrics into Post Saves is unfortunate. It may dilute the precision of reporting for e-commerce advertisers — many links get saved for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with offers.

No matter what you think of new metrics introduced by Facebook, one thing is for certain. It pays off to pay attention to the upcoming changes in Facebook Ads Manager! Take some time to re-organize your reports, so that you do not scramble to locate metrics that no longer exist. Contact us if you need a little extra help with reporting or Facebook ads in general.

The post Upcoming Facebook Ad Metric Removals appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

In the previous installments of Social Media Marketing 101, we have gone through ways to establish your initial strategy and also covered the major social networks your small business may want to be on.

Now it is time to look at each one of them in detail. Let’s start with Facebook!

Facebook Basics

Facebook is big, bigger than any other social network out there. Unless you want to advertise, it is completely free t use. Anyone over 13 years old anywhere in the world may register on Facebook.

Here is the personal information you will need to provide to get started:

• your first and last name,
• a valid email address,
• date of birth,
• gender.

Once you register, you will be able to make all of these details as private or as public as you wish.

Everyone registered on Facebook has a personal profile. On the other hand, businesses on Facebook are represented by Pages or by Groups (more on that later).

Are you thinking, “May I create a business page without a personal Facebook account?”

Unfortunately, the answer is no. You cannot create any type of business presence on Facebook without registering a personal profile first. This used to be possible, but no longer.

Note that you also should not create an additional personal account to run a page. Facebook frowns on duplicate accounts and may suspend both without warning.

Even though you must have a profile, you do not have to use it actively in order to create and run pages. Your name will not be associated with your business page in any way. The names of page admins/contributors are not public and cannot be seen by anyone except admins and contributors themselves.

Facebook for Business: A Page or a Group?

Facebook Pages

Pages are official brand/business profiles on Facebook. They function similarly to personal profiles: they have a profile picture, a cover photo, pertinent business information and contact details. Admins and visitors may post updates, upload photos and videos to the Page.

A few things that set pages apart from personal profiles:

• A page is public by default. Admins may restrict access to it by age and by country (allowing/not allowing visitors from certain countries ).
• Anyone, excluding those restricted by admins, may like and follow a page.
• By default, anyone can publish to the page and upload photos/videos. Admins may restrict that ability by requiring post moderation prior to publishing. Visitors’ posts appear in a separate column on the right, making them less visible on the page.
• Visitors may review a page unless the admin turns that ability off.

Go to Page Settings to change any of the options above.

Facebook Groups

Groups are community- and discussion-oriented, so all participants’ posts carry equal weight on the main feed. Admins and moderators are in charge of groups, which may be public, private or secret.

• Public groups are visible in search and anyone may browse their contents.
• Private groups are also visible in search, but post-viewing is restricted to group members. Anyone may request to join the group; a moderator or an existing group member (depending on settings) will have to approve the request.
• Secret groups do not show up in Facebook search. Only existing members may add new members to the group, which may or may not be subject to admin/moderator approval.

Facebook Groups are an interesting beast. They are wonderful for building an online community of like-minded participants and for encouraging conversation. They are rarely a great choice for a brand to represent itself on Facebook.

Small businesses should be represented by a Facebook page, not a Facebook group. Small businesses should also never be represented by a personal profile instead of a page. Do not turn your personal profile into a profile for your business.

Setting up a Facebook Page

This actually couldn’t be simpler! Wherever you are on Facebook, you can look to the very right corner of the screen and click the little triangular arrow.

From the pop-down menu that appears, choose “Create Page” and follow Facebook’s prompts.

Everything from then on should be about your business, not yourself, so you should choose a page category and fill in all the information according to what represents your business best.

Upload your profile picture (your business logo is a great choice) and choose a cover photo. Profiles pictures work best in the square format. The recommended dimensions for cover photos are 851 by 315 pixels, but you may upload a bigger image and reposition it as you wish.

To edit any of the Page sections, click on the three dots under the page cover photo and go to Edit Page Info.

Invite your friends from your personal profile to get the first likes on your Page. It is easy: click on the three dots under the page cover photo and go to Invite Friends. You can select people to invite individually.

Facebook Page Best Practices

Do:

• Fill in the sections of your Page as much as possible. Write the business story, describe your products or services, indicate the year you founded the company.
• Choose a profile picture and a cover photo that represent your brand the best. Your logo should be present somewhere on the page. Cover photos may be a bit more creative to allow you to stand out.
• Provide ample contact details, including your phone number (very important!), your website, and a physical address if you are a local business.
• Post regularly: nothing looks worse than an abandoned Facebook Page!
• Invite your friends to like your Page. Some of them are already looking for what you offer and others will be happy to support you by liking the page. Get that like count started!

Don’t:

• Turn your personal Facebook profile into a business “profile”.
• Create another personal account for business purposes if you are already on Facebook.
• Post personal photos, status updates or videos on your business page. Keep it professional.

Try it out!

Facebook is such a robust platform that you can read volumes and volumes about it and still have something surprising left to discover. This post outlined the very basics of starting up on Facebook. As a small business owner, you will find that you can get a hang of the basics very quickly – you just need to start!

What Facebook functionality should we cover next? Let us know in the comments! ?

The post Social Media Marketing 101: Facebook Basics appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

Welcome back to Social Media Marketing 101! In our first post, we narrowed down your strategy and clarified ways in which you can approach social media marketing, depending on your business goals.

Today, we will discuss the next very important step of your social media marketing journey: choosing the social networks to focus on in your marketing campaigns! We will:

• cover six of the most popular social networks,
• list their advantages and special features,
• and help you decide which ones are best-suited for your business!

Let’s get started!

1. Facebook

Facebook is the largest social network on the planet with over 1.86 billion monthly active users. The platform has evolved over the years. Facebook users stay in touch with friends, family, and colleagues by posting various types of content (photos, videos, text updates, links). They also:

• follow and comment on news;
• connect with brands, businesses, public figures on various Pages;
• engage with like-minded individuals in public and private Groups.

Why your business should be on Facebook

The sheer number of active users should have convinced you already. In case not, Facebook refers more traffic to third-party websites than any other social network. Business owners can build beautiful, functional and content-rich pages to represent their companies on Facebook. Its advertising platform is also incredibly powerful, for which only Google Adwords is a valid competitor.

Why your business should NOT be on Facebook

You may want to consider investing your time in another social network (namely LinkedIn), if your business is in the niche that isn’t too marketable or palatable to wide audiences. An example would be a funeral home, a hospice or a collection agency. We are struggling to come up with another example. Convincing a business not to be on Facebook in most cases is playing devil’s advocate.

2. Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging public platform which allows users to publish messages of 140 characters or shorter (called “Tweets”). Anything and everything that can be expressed in 140 characters goes! Breaking news, commentary, opinions, live tweets of events, chatting with friends (called “Followers”)… Twitter is surprisingly versatile for what it offers. Most tweets are public, which makes it easier to discover interesting people and companies to follow.

Why your business should be on Twitter

If you create a lot of content like blog posts, case studies or articles, sharing them on Twitter is a great way to spread the word about your business. Twitter has made itself visually appealing and interesting by allowing images, GIFs and even videos to be attached to tweets.

If you are in a niche industry, you are likely to find peers and other professionals more easily on Twitter than on Facebook. Twitter is also a great customer service tool which allows you to monitor your customers’ feedback about your business and quickly respond to their concerns.

Why your business should NOT be on Twitter

If your primary goal on social media is to direct people to your website to make a purchase or an order, Twitter scores quite low in that regard. You are better off with Facebook (and using its ads). Furthermore, if not a lot of people offer praise or complaints to you on Twitter, it may not be worth your time to try to pedal it as a customer support channel.

3. Instagram

Instagram is a highly visual social network which focuses exclusively on photos and video content. It is used for sharing photos and videos that users mostly take on their phones. It has also become increasingly commonplace to share high-quality professional photography, comics, illustrations and other entertaining visual content.

Indeed, a lot of brands are able to effectively connect with their customers through photo sharing on Instagram. Instagram feels immediate and personal, and harnessing that humanizing feel has brought many brands huge success on the network.

Why your business should be on Instagram

If your company has a strong visual representation of its offering, Instagram is perfect for you. Fashion sellers, cooking schools, bars, restaurants, travel agencies, book stores etc can all benefit! It is a lot easier to get discovered on Instagram by potential customers than on Facebook or even Twitter through the use of hashtags (clickable tags like #Instagram or #socialmedia).

Why your business should NOT be on Instagram

Being highly visual, Instagram requires a steady stream of high-quality visual content to keep your followers engaged. It also does not make it easy to share other people’s visual content, the way Pinterest does.

Unfortunately, some businesses simply do not easily translate into visuals. For example, an accounting firm would have a hard time making Instagram work. It will be unlikely to find clients through it. It can still have an Instagram account to publish photos of team retreats or client success stories, but that is a different use of it entirely.

To put it simply, if you can’t immediately think of ten images you could post on Instagram about your business, reconsider it as your main choice. Place your focus on Facebook and Twitter, or another niche network, instead.

4. Pinterest

Pinterest is a social network of beautiful images (called “Pins”) organized (or “pinned”) into collections (called “Boards”). Just like Instagram, Pinterest is a very visual medium. It got its start as a DIY and interior design heaven. Today it has grown into a powerhouse of visual inspiration, tips, and instructions on travel, fashion, food, gardening and anything else you can possibly imagine. Pinterest has a monthly active user count of 150 million, with the demographic being very female-dominant (85% of users are women).

Why your business should be on Pinterest

If your brand has a visually appealing side targeting Pinterest’s core demographic, it could be a great choice. Unlike on Instagram, you can layer your brand presentation, building up from a single Pin to a whole Board. You may also include keyword-rich product descriptions and attractive clickable links. Pinterest ads (Promoted Pins) may help you reach a wider audience, increase engagement with your content and send more traffic to the website.

Why your business should NOT be on Pinterest

You should look critically at your product and decide if it can be represented well on the medium. See above for examples that wouldn’t do well on Instagram, as Pinterest is similar. Visuals are key!

If you have plans of casting your social media net really wide, building a Pinterest presence using your existing content is doable. If you are looking for one or two “big” ones to focus on, and Pinterest does not seem like a natural choice, keep looking.

5. YouTube

YouTube is a platform for user-uploaded videos featuring an incredible range of talent producing all sorts of videos. How-to videos, comedy sketches, and even short action films attract over a billion users. Every registered user has an option of starting a channel to upload videos (for free) or simply use her account to interact with videos on the platform. YouTube has an advertising platform that allows content creators to place ads before, after or in the middle of their video clips.

Why your business should be on YouTube

According to Shareaholic, YouTube drives the most engaged traffic of all the social networks, period. If your company can afford to invest in the creation of videos about your product, you should be on YouTube. (Put simply, if you can only say it in a video, YouTube is for you.)

For sure, a lot of different businesses in different industries can attract a lot of views and generate genuine engagement by putting up videos to help or to inspire prospective customers. The key is figuring out whether the benefits of producing videos for YouTube will outweigh the costs of their production.

Why your business should NOT be on YouTube

If you want to test the waters of sharing videos with your customers, look into Instagram first. See if the video format is the right fit. Do not dive into YouTube head first only to abandon your channel a few months later.

6. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network where professionals come to, well, network. Think of LinkedIn as Facebook for your professional connections. You have a personal profile which focuses on your career and professional skills, effectively acting as your online resume. You can choose to restrict access to your profile fully or partially. LinkedIn is actively used by recruiters to hire employees.

Why your business should be on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has 450 million users, with 25% consistently active on the network. LinkedIn stands apart from all the other social networks discussed because its nature is not inherently entertaining. Instead, it focuses specifically on work, career search, and (especially) professional services. Therefore, if you feel that every other network is not “serious” enough for your business, LinkedIn may be for you. Another reason you may want to consider building a presence on LinkedIn is its robust B2B advertising and publishing capabilities.

Why your business should NOT be on LinkedIn

As a business, you have limited platform functionality. Businesses are represented by Company Pages that do not yet live up to the standard of Facebook Pages. Apart from being present purely from a brand image point of view, you will likely not benefit from it if you are a small local business or an eCommerce website. B2C tend to have better results on other social networks. That said, you as a business owner should definitely have a LinkedIn profile!

So Which One?

Above, we talked about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram which offer the most diverse set of uses suitable for many small businesses. We also covered YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, listing their advantages and niche uses.

Your business does not have to be on all six. In fact, we strongly encourage you to pick just one or two to get started. Keeping your social media goals in mind, study the list to decide which ones are the best for you.

• The Facebook + Twitter combo is very common.
• Instagram + Pinterest is a great choice for highly visual brands.
• Twitter + LinkedIn would suit a service professional perfectly.
• Only Facebook? Good.
• Just Twitter? Depending on your industry, it could work!

Which one will your business go for?

Stay tuned for Part 3 of Social Media Marketing 101!

The post Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses: How to Choose Social Networks appeared first on SMM Headquarters.