cheat sheet to facebook marketing

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Cheat Sheet to Facebook Marketing Facebook marketing is a lot more than just running campaigns through Facebook Ads. Though the ad platform gets the majority of the attention, what you’re posting, sharing, and building on your Facebook Page is just as—if not more—important. Marketing on Facebook has quite a few massive benefits including (but definitely not limited to): - It’s a free marketing platform (except when running ads) -It’s a platform that users will actively engage with instead of ignoring -It averages with high conversion and click-through rates -You build rapport and loyalty with your audience Marketing on Facebook can be difficult, especially at first, but if you follow a few easy steps it’s a lot easier. This cheat sheet to Facebook marketing gives you the steps you need to follow (and continue to follow in a cyclical manner) in order to find success on this incredible platform. To make it easy, we’ve broken down this guide into 6 quick chapters that talk about each of these steps: Chapter 1: Connect With Your Audience Chapter 2: Build Your Brand Chapter 3: Build Engagement Chapter 4: Interacting with Users Chapter 5: Using Facebook to Make Sales Chapter 6: The Power of Automated Posts

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Page 1: Cheat Sheet to Facebook Marketing

Cheat Sheet to Facebook Marketing

Facebook marketing is a lot more than just running campaigns through Facebook Ads.

Though the ad platform gets the majority of the attention, what you’re posting, sharing,

and building on your Facebook Page is just as—if not more—important.

Marketing on Facebook has quite a few massive benefits including (but definitely not

limited to):

- It’s a free marketing platform (except when running ads)

-It’s a platform that users will actively engage with instead of ignoring

-It averages with high conversion and click-through rates

-You build rapport and loyalty with your audience

Marketing on Facebook can be difficult, especially at first, but if you follow a few easy

steps it’s a lot easier. This cheat sheet to Facebook marketing gives you the steps you

need to follow (and continue to follow in a cyclical manner) in order to find success on

this incredible platform.

To make it easy, we’ve broken down this guide into 6 quick chapters that talk about each

of these steps:

Chapter 1: Connect With Your Audience

Chapter 2: Build Your Brand

Chapter 3: Build Engagement

Chapter 4: Interacting with Users

Chapter 5: Using Facebook to Make Sales

Chapter 6: The Power of Automated Posts

Page 2: Cheat Sheet to Facebook Marketing

Chapter 1: Connect With Your Audience

There are several ways you can connect with your target audience on Facebook and

continue to do so. The hardest part is easily getting started—inviting your entire friends

list is a good start, but often doesn’t get you exactly the audience you’re looking for.

Some of the best ways to connect with your target audience on Facebook include

promoting your Page (on and off Facebook), using Facebook Ads, and utilizing groups

on Facebook.

Promoting your Page: Your Page is where you can post, and where users can come to

see what you have to say (and to say what they have to say). If you want to market on

Facebook, the first thing you need to do is get people to your Page—that’s where the

marketing happens.

There are a lot of ways to promote your Page, including:

-Promoting your Page off-Facebook: Post links to your Facebook Page

everywhere—on your website, on other social media sites, on your business cards,

everywhere. The more people who see it, the better.

-E-mail campaigns: If clients and potential customers liked you enough to sign

up for your e-mail list, they like you enough to follow your Facebook Page. This

is a great way to connect with an insanely

relevant audience; they’re already familiar

with you and have established some sort of

relationship with you. Make sure you mention

your Page, and always have a link to it in your

signature.

-Tag well-known Pages in your posts: No

matter what industry you’re in, there’s a good

chance there are a few major Pages everyone

follows (our niche, for example, has the

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Social Media Examiner). If you share the content from these pages and tag them

in it, there may be some fans who see this (and are already interested in your

field) and click right back to your Page.

-Use hashtags:

Hashtags turn phrases

or topics into actual

clickable links in your

post, helping others

interested in the topic to

find it. You can use

hashtags to expand your

reach.

These methods are all effective, but they do take time. Don’t be discouraged—keep

working at it. If you’re looking for a quicker boost, it may be time to look at investing in

Facebook Ads.

Facebook Ads: Facebook’s ad platform is so effective with good reason: it works.

When you run Facebook Ads, you can choose from a large variety of options like running

campaigns for conversions, website visits, app installs, or likes or engagement on your

Page.

I rarely run campaigns with the goal of getting likes on a Page—if you run campaigns for

engagement, users are already prompted to like your Page while simultaneously being

encouraged to also interact with the ad.

While Facebook Ads is only one small facet of advertising and marketing on Facebook

(and is definitely not the focus of this guide), the ad system is a highly effective method

to connect with your target audience, partially thanks to Facebook’s targeting system.

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Page 4: Cheat Sheet to Facebook Marketing

This is easily the most effective way, really, to get your Page and brand in front of an

audience you think will be most receptive to it, whether they know about you yet or not.

Groups: There are a wide variety of groups that discuss every type of niche on

Facebook; groups for industry professionals, groups for people with different hobbies,

even groups of local “things-to-do” in cities and communities.

If you’re a local business, you can offer discounts to locals or group members in a

community group, always with information to your Page. You can network in groups for

industry professionals, and you can advertise to those in groups for a hobby. You can

have a link to your Page (often even better than a link to your website, especially when

you’re working on promoting your Page) and see who shows up.

To be clear: connecting with your audience in groups does not mean to spam the heck out

of the groups. This is a bad idea. It will not make you any friends, and it may even end up

getting you kicked out of the group.

The good news is that once you’ve gotten started connecting with your audience,

even though you’ll always have to make an effort to continue to increase those likes,

you’ve got momentum going; it’s likely that their engagement with your page, no matter

how they found you, will be seen by their friends (whether these just see a like on the

Page or the users recommend it directly), some of whom will likely share the interest.

It’s important to keep this momentum going. While continuing to make efforts to

promote your Page and connect with your audience is part of it, so is building your brand,

building engagement, and interacting with users.

Chapter 2: Build Your Brand

Facebook marketing offers you one of the best opportunities to build your brand, not just

on Facebook, but as a whole. You get to continually edit and put out content that you

want to represent you and your business

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Profile and Cover Picture: This will be the first impression users get of your Page, and

in some cases, your entire business. Your profile and cover pictures matter a lot more

than you may think; they can of course help capture interest, but they also represent your

brand.

Having your logo, pictures of your product, your store, or something related to what you

do is important, especially since it needs to match what you want your brand to really be.

About me Section: In the About Me section, you actually get to describe your business

exactly the way you envision it; this is a rare opportunity. Instead of being a “sandwich

place,” as customers may label you, you can be “an eclectic sandwicheria and tea house

inspired by Asian cuisine.” This is a great place to spell out exactly what you want your

brand to be, and to reinforce it.

Transparency: Marketing on Facebook offers something really unique and special to the

marketing world: transparency, or at least the impression of it. Users feel like they’re

getting to see “the real you” and the inside look behind the scenes. It’s easy to reinforce

this by talking about things other than promoting your product, even if you never really

get too personal.

Posting pictures of your employees working on planning an event or making your

product (without giving too much away) can give that behind the scenes look.

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This transparency is a great way to build rapport and loyalty with customers, new and old

alike. Nurture it.

Great, Unique Content: This goes

without saying, but it’s so important that it

still needs to actually be said. The content

you post becomes the single most

important part of building your brand on

Facebook, as well as your Facebook

marketing. It needs to interesting, original,

and just truly great—this is what makes

your Page worth visiting, and your

business worth knowing. It makes your

brand yours.

More than having strong content that also happens to be unique, it needs to be frequent

and consistent. Pick a voice for your brand and stick to it, and make sure you’re posting

frequently. If you’re not, people forget to check in or lose interest entirely.

Every single thing you post and add to your Facebook Page contributes to your

brand; even what users post can come to reflect on it. It’s important to keep this in

mind, especially since what you post stays online forever—someone can take a screen

shot faster than you can delete a mistake, and the screen shot is permanent. Every time

you’re about to update a post, don’t just check for grammar—check to make sure it aligns

with your brand and what you want it to be.

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Chapter 3: Build Engagement

Here’s something a lot of marketers ignore when they focus purely on conversions and

short-term results: building engagement is crucial, because building engagement builds

loyalty.

No, it’s maybe not as immediately profitable to get a comment on your latest post as it is

to get a sale on your site, but long term it does matter—a great deal, actually.

On another major note, not only does increasing engagement mean a more loyal

audience, it also means a better reach. The more an audience engages with your content,

the more people will see it in their Newsfeeds, and the more you can connect with the

people who want to connect with you. This is a huge part of Facebook marketing, and it

should never be ignored.

Building engagement can be a struggle; it’s definitely something most Pages have a hard

time accomplishing. Fortunately, there’s some easy ways you can start to do this:

Ask Questions: A time-honored tip. Asking questions almost dares someone to answer

them, and people love giving their opinions. Whether it’s business-related (“What new

products would you want to see us bring in stock ?”) or not (“What are you doing this

Christmas?”), people love to answer.

Don’t Make it All About Business:

While we’re on the subject of talking

about non-business related topics, a

good rule to follow is the 80/20 rule.

This means that only 20% of your posts

on Facebook should be directly about

your products or promotions, and that

80% should be social (though this can

and often should still be industry or audience related).

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As we'll discuss in the few next chapters, Facebook isn’t about the hard sell; people will

stop liking your Page if it feels like a sales pitch. Make it fun to be on your Page and

offer value, and people will keep coming back.

Utilize Pictures and Videos: Graphics capture the attention of users, even if it’s just

because they take up more room on a Newsfeed. Pictures wherever possible are great, but

even more than that, video views have increased dramatically on Facebook; a large

percentage of people will watch videos that show up in their Newsfeeds. If possible,

posting a video will likely get a lot of views, and it is more likely to get engagement, too.

Creating Content Users Really Want to See: Yes, this fits under building your brand,

too, so we won’t talk much about it here. But this is so important to building engagement.

Sharing content from other pages and sites, creating content you know your audience will

love, and finding content that also offers something unique are all important parts of

getting and keeping your audience engaged. This can be really difficult, consistently

posting great content, but we talk more about how to make that easier in Chapter 6.

Finally, one of the most important ways to build engagement is to respond when

users engage with your Page. But that’s important enough it has a chapter all of it’s

own.

Chapter 4: Interacting with Users

This is the point of a social media site, after all—to be social. In a regular sales call, you

don’t just talk at the potential client, you talk to them. There’s a conversation. When

users take the time to leave comments or ask questions on your Page, make sure you

respond to them, whether they are positive or negative—either way, they took time out of

their day to express their thoughts and concerns. A response back will mean a great deal

to them.

Particularly or negative comments or concerns, it’s ideal to respond within one hour. This

is not always possible, however; so long as you respond within 24 hours, you’re still in

the golden window.

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Even if someone only comments on a post, it’s good to respond to as many of these

comments as you can. It shows that you are engaged with your users and take note of

what they say—even if you’re responding on autopilot.

Your website is the place to list information, post pictures of products, and say whatever

you want with a tiny “Contact Us!” at the bottom of the page. Your Facebook Fan Page is

where you have a conversation with the users that visit and engage with it.

In order to foster an environment where you can have these conversations, again, use the

tips from previous chapters to build engagement and excitement on your Page.

Interacting with users reinforces the loyalty and rapport you’ve started building the

second they choose to interact with you—it makes it stronger and seals those ties.

Being lazy and not following through is one of the biggest mistakes you’ll make, and can

really hurt your Facebook marketing. This is the last thing you want, since after you build

that loyalty, you can start to use Facebook to make real sales and real money.

Chapter 5: Use Facebook to Increase Sales (without Ads)

Before we get started, there’s one important fact you should always consider: with the

exception of Facebook Ads (and even sometimes including Facebook Ads), Facebook is

never about the aggressive hard sell.

Users come onto Facebook to interact with friends, click around, and enjoy leisure time.

They do not come on Facebook to have things sold to them like they’ve signed up to be

friends with an especially persistent car salesman. Making your Page all about selling

your product will get you unliked and potentially even penalized by Facebook faster than

you can blink.

That being said, it is more than possible to use Facebook marketing to increase sales,

even without Facebook Ads (though Ads is the quickest and often most efficient way to

make sales on Facebook). Using slow sell methods and building rapport over a long

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period of time, Facebook marketing is more about a nudge and a follow-up than a sales

pitch; the idea is to remind users you and your product are there if they ever need

anything.

Fortunately, there are some tried and true ways of doing this. All of them require a

delicate hand (and again, no harsh selling), but all have been proven to work really well.

Post Sales: Sales are all about the customer’s benefit, right? And after all, you as

someone who cares about your customers would hate for them to miss the sale—it’s for

their benefit that they save the money. A fast reminder (“Hey everyone, don’t forget

about our 24 hour sale starting tonight!” with a link to the sales page) is all it takes to

prompt users to check it out. After all, who doesn’t love to save, even if it means

spending a little to do it?

Offer Discounts: You can offer special discounts for Facebook-only users, or only to

users who have left a review on your Page, for example. You can do this with Facebook

Offers (part of Facebook Ads), or you can just tell users off-Facebook (and on it) that you

offer special Facebook-only discounts. Using this discounts keep users checking your

Page frequently, as well as giving them the feeling of being included. This builds rapport,

and can help lead to sales.

Post Pictures of New

Products: Posting pictures of

your products is a great way to

remind users how much they

love and want your product.

This is especially true if it’s

particularly relevant to what’s

going on, such as seasonal

events. Clothing stores can

post pictures of a woman in

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one of their raincoats in the rainy months, for example. Restaurants can post pictures of

their most appetizing dishes (this has an embarrassingly high conversion rate on people

like myself). You can do this in a fun, friendly way—it tends to work a lot better than a

sales pitch, too.

Don’t be Overly Aggressive: Again, we already touched on this in the beginning of the

chapter, but not only will being aggressive about sales lose you likes on your Page, it can

also get you penalized by Facebook and have your reach reduced. It is still ok to talk

about your business, your brand, your products, and even sales, but it’s not ok to have

posts telling customers to make a purchase or download instead of simply informing

them that it is there. Overly promotional posts that are created purely to sell something—

often identified relatively easily by an intrusive, assertive sales pitch with a call to action

—are what’s being punished here. You can see more about this here. As you'll see with

automated posts (like those from Facebook Auto Post Pro), there are better ways to post

monetized content without hard selling.

Facebook marketing wouldn’t be so popular if there wasn’t any potential to make

money from it. More than that, it wouldn’t be so popular if there wasn’t so much

potential to make really good money. And it is more than possible; again, it takes time

and effort, but Facebook marketing is a great way to increase your sales and your client

list. Fortunately, there is new software starting to emerge that helps make the process

both easier and faster: software that enables automated posts.

Chapter 6: The Power of Automated Posts

Multiple times throughout this guide we’ve mentioned how time consuming Facebook

marketing is. That’s true—it’s slow going, and it’s easily the most frustrating and

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challenging part of the process, to continually find great content again and again and be

posting constantly for so long.

Fortunately, some really talented marketers have started coming up with ways around this

problem; some have even started creating software to make the process much faster and

easier for marketers, software that is designed to automate posts. An example of this

software is FB Auto Post Pro, which is launching April 6th.

What Are Automated Posts?

Automated posts are exactly what they sound like; you can set up a series of campaigns

through software to run (and repeat, if you choose) at a designated time for a designated

Facebook Page. You can set up these posts all at one time (say, setting up a week’s worth

on one day), and run them on schedule, so you can focus on other things.

The best news: software like FB Auto Post Pro actually provides you with resources to

pull relevant, monetized content in from various sources. You don’t even have to create

the content yourself, you just have to search for it, find it, and create a campaign around it

to distribute it to your fan pages.

How They Help You

The simple answer: they save you time and often money, make the process much easier,

and have the ability to make you a lot of money in the process.

Software like FB Auto Post Pro automates something you may be paying someone close

to (or more than) $1,000 a month to do by helping you find relevant, unique content

instead of having someone create it for you.

Even if you’re creating the content yourself, it’s still saving you a lot of time and money

by allowing you to focus your energy on the part of your business you probably love a lot

more than posting on Facebook.

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Let’s even take away the fact that you don’t need to even create the content (content that

may end up not converting); even without that, the benefits of automated posting

software for Facebook are huge.

Part of the reason Facebook marketing is so challenging is because reach is so low;

automated software allows you to run a post or campaign multiple times without having

to keep track of what you posted when. This allows more people to see it, and hopefully

this means more people purchase.

You also have the benefit of a computer’s precision—an accuracy that is void of human

error. Nothing falls between the cracks with automated software: you don’t have to worry

about forgetting a post, or forgetting anything; everything happens through one program,

and happens on autopilot.

Especially when it comes to affiliate marketing, FB Auto Post Pro’s software can open

the possibility for a lot of moneymaking opportunities. You can run multiple fan pages

with every little effort, capitalizing on each one and increasing your ROI.

Conclusion

Facebook marketing is all about the slow and soft sell, not about hammering Newsfeeds

with pictures of your products and underhanded, self-indulging compliments about why

you’re better than the competition. It’s also extremely effective when done correctly,

even if it is time consuming, and well worth the time and effort put into it.

As discussed in the last chapter, however, it doesn’t have to be quite as time consuming

and exhausting when you have the right tools. FB Auto Post Pro, as mentioned, is a great

tool that will cut down on time spent on Facebook marketing tenfold, often while

delivering even stronger results in the long run. To find out more about FB Auto Post Pro

and how it can revolutionize your business and marketing on Facebook you can see more

here and sign up before it launches April 6th.

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