Facebook Myth's

Facebook promotions take many forms.

One brand will give away instant-print coupons behind a “like” gate. Another will reward random fans for posting on the brand’s wall. And still another will host a sweepstakes in a custom third-party application.
Can you guess which one of these is violating Facebook’s rules and is likely to see their page brought down?

Alas, Facebook resembles the wild west of social networking. And just as the lawless land of email marketing was tamed a decade ago, the ever-evolving Facebook platform is being settled by emerging best practices, updates to the user experience, and Facebook’s stringent promotion guidelines.

If an objective of your contest is to “go viral”, Facebook wants to stop you. Why? First, Facebook wants you to pay them to drive impressions and engagement through its advertising
platform. Additionally, thanks to game publishers like Zynga (the makers of Farmville and Mafia Wars), viral tactics are now widely considered annoying by Facebook users. Facebook’s desire to make money while delivering an uncluttered user experience means the virality you seek isn’t likely to happen.

MYTH: Clicks on your "Like" button = brand engagement.
REALITY: It's not that easy. Make your brand worth spending time with and you'll achieve real engagement: passion and loyalty. As social media blogger Jay Baer candidly quipped, "I have a deeper engagement with a can of beer than I do with the 'Like' button."

MYTH: Trolls will take over my contest and fan page. REALITY: A clear, thought-out social plan and solid promotions will keep trolls on a short leash. People are people, online as in life, and they'll share negative (and sometimes inappropriate) views as well as positive ones.

MYTH: Giving away an iPad is enough. REALITY: Making fans do stuff for prizes is ineffective; they know the odds of winning are low. Align prizing with your brand and ensure everyone walks away a true winner!

MYTH: I don't need rules for my Facebook contest. REALITY: The legal ramifications of running a contest on any medium are complicated, especially when you're doling out prizes. Seek legal counsel before your promotion, make the rules of the game very clear to players, and safeguard against abuse of those rules.


The Po!nt: Don't be fooled by Facebook's pretty face; it's a jungle in there. Thankfully, that jungle has safe pathways. Take time to learn them, and you'll produce a bunch of cool new inroads with happy, engaged fans. Scream Media has over 8 years experience navigating Facebook and other Social Media platforms. Contact us today on 021 5590800 for a free, no obligation quote.

Facebook Pay Per Click - Set up tips...

Getting started advertising on Facebook
 Set up a simple Facebook ad to promote it. Low campaign budget is recommended $10 – 20 per day and a low cost per click. Put the click budget way lower than what Facebook recommend (ignore the warning that the bid is too low). If you do not get any clicks then bump up the clicks to the next bracket.

CPC versus CPM?
Initially CPC (cost per click) is better to test the campaign and then roll out to CPM (cost per thousand impressions) as you know your metrics.

High CTR
The goal is to get at least  .30 CTR (click through rate).  Whilst the average  CTR is .03 Jen thinks a high CTR will lead to success for distribution.  Use images every time. Eye contact is important.

Use pictures
Get a picture of a happy smiling women (from the waist up) who is looking you in the eye. If that happy smiling is doing something that relates to the product that can be great for CTR.  Amateur photos showing the thing that you are selling work really well.

Add text to images
Get photoshop, Gimp or snagit to add text to the photo. You can put text in images to extend the headline. This really helps when you advertise a fan page. Use a matching font to the headline to give it the appearance of being  a longer headline.

Drive Traffic internally a fan Page or externally?
If you have a custom fan page you can send them there. If the fan page is bland or auto-posted then you should send traffic offsite. Engage people or lose them. If you are going to send them to a website you can squeeze emails and you can also do that on Facebook now.

Targeting
Google and Facebook are very different. Before you create your ad you should have a great list of all you competitors and targeted people who your customer will be following. Pay particular attention to the demographics of your market. Ads should target your ideal client is massive detail according to country, state, gender, marital status, school, suburb, fans and job. The insights section of your fan page will tell you who is visiting.

Ninja Targeting Secret
You can bid on competitors names as an interest (if they are there) in the like section and it will show when people visit there. This is seriously like a stalker ad with social proof mice in. Under Jens guidance I tested this for my latest SilverCircle mastermind round and my ad followed people who were interested in me for about 35,000 impressions.

Managing other peoples accounts
We at Scream Media manage other peoples accounts because it is much easier for them than setting up Facebook aid advertising from scratch. Putting through many thousands of dollar a day takes a risk tolerance and watchful eye.  Some clients use a paid service on a start stop basis so that the market can ramp up promotions.

Pausing Ads versus stopping them
Facebook is a fully manually approved ‘self serve’ pay per click engine. You will get different results for the same ad. The ad inventory draws from different ‘buckets’ and this means that you may get good or bad impressions. You have to test it.
Conversion tracking

If the only traffic is Facebook – you can easily see the results you are getting from Facebook. It is ideal to use a service like Tracking 202 to see which group of people are buying from you. Invest the time to setup a proper tracking campaign and you will get the results. We prefer statcounter for this

Time of day tips
The vast majority of traffic for most campaigns is prior to lunch. It seems not every worker is working! Get your campaigns running early in the day for the best results. Remember to test.

Social Media makes up 22% of time spent online

The onslaught of new social media sites has fundamentally changed the role of any marketing or communications professional. Every day millions of users are spending significant periods of time on social networks. In 2010, social media use represented 22 percent of the time spent online by users. The impact of social media on business cannot be ignored but how much is too much? For many organizations, hiring a social media specialist isn’t a viable option due to budget constraints or the responsibility for managing the social media programs falls on the shoulders of the communications department. It’s a role often already filled with deadlines and juggling of priorities between internal and external efforts, media relations, content creation, meetings and more.
The bottom line: Don’t chase every shiny object in the marketplace. A quick search on “social networking websites” and a visit to Wikipedia gave me 201 options. Now sure, some of these are very small and specific to a niche but it’s interesting to look back at all the ideas that someone thought were brilliant and revolutionary for their time.
The sad fact is that for every useful site like Caring Bridge or big hit like Facebook, there’s a Bolt or a Google Buzz that came and went or never took off at all. Set goals on what your company needs to achieve and create a set of key questions that you use in reviewing any new tool you want to explore. Think about using those filter questions as a screen to evaluate opportunities in front of you.
The questions will vary but take some time now (after a few more paragraphs at least) to think about and talk with the key stakeholders in your organization about the right questions. Filters should be specific enough to give you real, measurable information that can inform you about the potential success of your investment (time or money) in a social platform.

• Does this generate enough direct revenue to offset the staff time required?
• Will this expand our opportunities into a new market of interest to us?
• Is this tool effective enough to get customers to take a specific action whether its click to buy or visit a store?
• What level of speculative time investment are we willing to make?
• Could this lead to collaboration or co-promotion opportunities that will benefit the company?
• Does this effort align logically with our existing initiatives?

These are of course just samples and there isn’t a single way to do it. Perhaps 20 percent of a full-time employee’s time  to execute a program with unknown success is worth it in your model or the opportunity to create an entry to a new market.
Even once you create filters, there are times when you should try new efforts that don’t fit or take a chance. But by slowing down to evaluate the opportunities you at least make sure you’re not adding yet another task to your role without thoughtful purpose and a good chance at success.
How much of your time do you estimate goes into social media on a daily basis? And what has worked for you in balancing the requirements of social with other essential roles? If you are looking to outsource Social Media Marketing, look now further the Scream Media. Contact our marketing team today for a free no obligation quote. 021 5590800 or sue@scream-media.co.za