9 Surefire Facebook Marketing Tips

Amy Porterfield’s Facebook Advice From BlogWorld Expo New York

As social media’s 800 pound gorilla, marketers feel they must incorporate Facebook marketing into their overall plans, even if they’re not sure it will yield measurable results.

To get your social media strategy on track, Facebook marketing expert and author of Facebook Marketing all In One for Dummies, Amy Porterfield, shared these nine secrets, at BlogWorld Expo New York, to attracting clients and profits on Facebook after its recent enhancements. The bottom line is Facebook is all about the engagement.

  1. Determine your business goal(s) for your Facebook strategy. In other words, what do you want to achieve that moves your business forward? Be clear about the outcomes you want to achieve engaging on Facebook. The more specific you are, the easier it is to achieve your objectives.  Among the top marketing options are building a larger base of fans, assembling a list of prospects and customers, developing relationships with prospects, customers and fans, expanding your brand exposure, shaping your authority, and increasing revenues.
  2. Know your target market. As with other forms of marketing, understanding your target market and how they want to engage with you on Facebook is critical. Here’s how to create a marketing persona as well as a social media persona.
  3. Distinguish between the personal and the professional on Facebook. This is important for people representing companies on social media and others looking to keep personal details private. (Of course, anything you post on social media can become public.) Amy Porterfield noted that a Facebook profile is your personal persona and isn’t intended for monetary gain. You can have only one profile on Facebook; it must be your name and it’s limited to 5,000 friends. By contrast, a Facebook page is for business. While people are more likely to find your personal Facebook page, you can’t create opt-in opportunities on your profile or target friends using Facebook ads. Porterfield recommends using both profiles and company pages to get twice the exposure.
  4. Extend your brand onto Facebook. It’s critical to understand your brand and how to present it on social media. With Facebook’s focus on images, consider how to use photographs and illustrations to incorporate your brand into your page and related Facebook content and apps. Here are twelve points to get your brand on track and ten social media branding tips. Porterfield recommended taking a page from Social Media Examiner’s Facebook Page. Look at their website and their Facebook Page to fully appreciate the consistency.
    Social Media Examiner BrandingSocial media Examiner branding continues onto Facebook page
  5. Create your Facebook Timeline photo. Integrate your branding into this feature. Your timeline cover image can’t be promotional. It can’t have a call-to-action (aka CTA), price, purchase information, contact information or reference to likes or shares! Despite this, you can include a message in your cover photograph! Porterfield recommends using a combination of images and text. She changes her photograph depending upon her promotional calendar. Modify your image to attract attention. Create a template where you just change the background and text. Consider the next step you want visitors to take. Sample of Facebook Timeline Image with message
  6. Create custom Facebook apps. Facebook apps support your larger sales strategies and qualify prospects. In Porterfield’s words, it’s like having “mini websites within Facebook.” You can have up to eight apps on your Facebook page. Be specific about what you want people to do by naming your apps with action words. Take this one step further by running Facebook ads to your custom apps. By targeting your existing fan base and keeping them in Facebook, you build trust. Why send traffic to to a custom app since it’s an extra step? Because  people want to stay on Facebook, build a strategy around what people are already doing. Check out the custom app buttons. Call to action names.
  7. Include subscribe button on your Facebook Page. This allows anyone on Facebook to view your public profile posts. If someone requests to become a Friend, they’re instantly subscribed to your public posts. As a result, people feel a stronger connection through your profile versus your page because they interact with your posts in their news feeds. (See above screenshot.) How to create a signup page on Facebook via Amy Porterfield
  8. Use Facebook’s new engagement features. Like other social media platforms, engagement is the key to Facebook. At a minimum, respond to people who engage on your page. Among your options are pinning a post. This keeps your post at the top of the page with a photograph or video and a call-to-action. Only one pinned post can stay at the top of Facebook. Highlighted posts are useful when you have something to promote since it stretches across the page and stays there taking up more space. Schedule your posts on Facebook for greater engagement. Use Promoted posts to expand the number of viewers who see your news. Typically only 16% of your audience sees your news. Porterfield recommends budgeting for promoted posts.
  9. Measure your results on Facebook. Through the use of Facebook Insights, you can check what’s working and what’s not on your page. Porterfield recommends testing to see what works for your business.

For Facebook marketing to yield more than “likes”, you need to plan for success. To do this, you need to understand your business goals, your target market, your brand’s strengths and how to incorporate these elements into your Facebook activity, especially your photographs (including your timeline photo and your custom apps.)

What other Facebook marketing tips do you recommend and why?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


Here are some related articles you may find of interest:

The 7 Step Social Media Strategy Every Marketer Needs (Note provides a structured plan.)

Photo credits: Icon: http://www.iconspedia.com/icon/facebook-14500.html
Amy Porterfield photo: http://www.amyporterfield.com/about/

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