Social Media Marketing for Dummies - Part 2: Facebook

Well, this is overdue!

Back on June 6th, I started talking about how to use Social Media as an efficient marketing tool.

Today, I'm going into specifics. We're talking Facebook!
I know this is a "basics" class for some, but you'll have to look elsewhere on how to make a fanpage.

Facebook Promoted Posts

Option 1

Once your page is created, you can use "Facebook Promoted Pages" to get a boost in awareness. It's easy to use, and it's great to target a specific audience.

You can choose location (always good to segment geographically!).

You can choose interests (you know when Facebook asks you to click "like" on certain books, or hobbies? Well, you can use this information to target someone specific. If I'm selling hockey sticks, I can choose to only show my ad to someone who "likes" hockey, therefore limiting "wasted" targeting and getting a better ROI for your pay-per-like fee).

It will also show you a daily budget option, along with estimated number of new likes per day.

Option 2

You can also promote a single post from your page, instead of promoting your page in general. Doing a "Post Boost" lets you control what you want the population to see. Instead of seeing "Pierre's Hockey Sticks", they can see a specific photo of a product, or a post detailing a testimonial from a brand ambassador, etc. You decide what you want to boost!

Same as option 1, you can segment geographically and by interests, have daily budgets and estimated traffic.

Option 3

However, as we talked about before, everything depends on WHAT is your GOAL!

If it's raising awareness and getting more likes on Facebook so you can get the word out, then option 1 mentioned above is a good starting point.

If you want to raise online sales, because you're too cool for Facebook and don't care about likes and just want to go straight to the money, then you can use "Facebook Promoted Website".

Here, you link an "ad" that redirects the traffic to a specific web page on your site instead of by-passing on your Facebook page. By doing so, all of your clicks are already converted into website traffic, increasing online sales potential.

Same as options 1 and 2, you can segment geographically and by interests, have daily budgets and estimated traffic.

These are my 3 favorite integrated promotion tools from Facebook. Did I miss something you find important? Please comment below!

Facebook Insights

Now that you're putting effort into your Facebook presence, what should you do next?

Make sure you become familiar with Facebook Insights. It offers SO MUCH valuable information for free!

Such information includes best day of the week and best time of day to post (when you have the most active users), what type of posts are getting more engagement (text VS photo VS etc.),

It also gives you plenty of statistics, such as segmentation details (audience info), overall reach, visits, and geographical information on your followers. 

For now, I won't go into further details. I will eventually post about evaluating your overall Online marketing using Google Analytics, and will cover Facebook Insights in this post-to-come.

Any questions before then, just give me a shout!

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Pierre Babineau is an MBA graduate from Laval University. Currently working as an Industrial Marketing Advisor at FPInnovations, he has worked in Canada, USA, South Africa and India in numerous positions such as International Development Agent, Head of Trade Mission, Director of Internet Marketing and an Independent Consultant for various companies.

You can reach Pierre Babineau on Twitter, LinkedIn or on his personal website.

Follow @pierrebab