…and Lisa Saline today.
Hi, how are you?
Good, good! We’re going to be chatting today, we’re just going to be chatting today about Facebook changes and the upcoming promotions for the holiday season. It’s time to start thinking about that. It’s actually has already been time to start thinking about that but we’re going to remind you, in case you haven’t. So Kimmy is missing today, once again, but we’re going to cover it. And we’re kind of changing the format like I brought up on the last show that sometimes it’s going to be must me and Lisa. Sometimes maybe Lisa will do something, and sometimes my phone will ring, which I’d love to turn off but … you know the things that happen. It’s great!
So anyway, let’s go and get started on Facebook. Let’s talk about that because the reason I want to discuss this is there’s been a few things and it’s been frustrating for even us as social media people who do this for a living. We all get frustrated when Facebook decides to suddenly make a move an make a change without telling you. You know, and I don’t know if you …
Specially when you’re doing a class live and you say, “oh you’re button is here on the left,” and it’s on the top right corner… real-time.
Exactly, exactly and to me, that happens a lot. I mean it happens quite often. So one thing that happened to me last week is I was, last few weeks, I’ve been more than anything using Post Planner. Shout out to Post Planner because we love their app and we use their app quite a bit. And so it’s a scheduler and so I’ve been scheduling a lot on Post Planner. So I went back to Facebook and I was just going to try to load a video and schedule that out and for the life of me I couldn’t find the schedule button. It used to be that little, looks like a clock in the, right where you are posting, it was gone. I have no idea and honestly think of this for my social media friends because that’s how I’ve…. I was going crazy and so that has moved but I heard it might be moved again, that they’re testing this. So just don’t,so be prepared for some more change possibilities here because they’ve been messing around with the pages for the last couple of weeks a lot.
Well they haven’t the emoticons that you could put in the comments.
Yeah.
You know the little things that I mean, some of these news feeds were full of these little pictures, the graphics. And then the next day I went and you couldn’t do it again. And then I saw it come back and so I’m just, it was kind of funny.
Yeah.
Definitely.
And mine have disappeared like I loaded a whole bunch in and then they were gone and I don’t know. So it’s never perfect. No technology is, though. None. So now Lisa have you figured out where that scheduler is? Have you seen and used it?
I have near the comment box when you go to post. It’s actually on your lower right when I’m looking at the screen it’s on the right-hand side, it’s a blue button. And you have to use the drop-down arrow and then it’ll say schedule post.
Yep, so it’s really on the button, yeah on the button but it’s the little arrow. Like when you’ve been known to, I don’t know, it was something I was surprised with. So bottom line is to make sure that it’s, so explain once again Lisa it’s on that blue Post button.
On a blue Post button so before you hit post, right next to the button itself there’s a little arrow that’s pointing down. Click on the arrow, it will give you a few options and it’ll ask you if you want to schedule your post. And that’s where you’re going to put it.
Okay, and we could demo that, too. We can also demo that, too. We have a couple of things we want to demo so we’ll do that at the same time. So let’s move on to the Facebook Fan Gate (?), the like gate, you know, whatever you want to call it. There’s many names for it. But it’s basically that gate where forces people to like the page within.
See a picture, like it to get the contest, to win a pizza or like it to find out information behind that gate. And it was purposely put there to entice people to like the page. And I know there’s a big uproar about oh-my-gosh-that’s-gone-what-are-we-gong-to-do. So I think it’s important to help educate our listeners that Facebook is still relevant. You could still get in front of the right audience.
I agree. And it’s something that’s going to be disappearing. I believe it’s still existing until, and I don’t have an exact date, but I believe it’s November 6th that they’re actually going to, like, it won’t be there anymore. So I don’t know, if somebody is doing that on, they have an app set up, I’m not sure how their app’s going to work. So it’s something to look at if they have an app that is pointing for people to like the page in order to enter blank or whatever it may be or see something, they’re going to need to fix that. That’s one thing I would look at. There’s a lot of ideas that you have said. Honestly since they changed the timeline, the fan pages’ timeline, about what two years ago, I don’t know. Time flies so fast but it’s been a while. I haven’t used that like gate as much as used to before the timeline changed, in the first place. The only time we really used it was on apps for contests more than anything. So in reality it was bringing in the wrong types of people. A lot of people were doing that to, so they get like after like after like but then they give away an iPad that the general population needed, not necessarily their target market, does that makes sense?
Yes it does because one of the companies that I had been working with were all about the invite-to-like-game. And they just kept building the likes. And I said, you know, take that hundred dollar bill and give it to somebody else because they’re not coming back to your page. So it’s not about the number of likes. That’s not going to put food on your table. The engagement is what’s going to put, what is going to convert to customers. It’s having the right people on your page that you can talk, have a conversation with. And so I think there’s just a better a way and now with Facebook re-targeting and Facebook ads there’s an ability to get in front of the right audience. That way versus having them like a page.
Yes, yes, well let’s talk about that. Let’s talk these options here. Heyo did a great posts and we will put that in our show notes. Heyo did a wonderful post all about how to get likes and engage customers and people instead of the old fan gateway. So we will post that but some of the pull outs I got from that and other things that I’ve seen is like you said, using those targeted ads.
Absolutely! And you know the Facebook re-targeting is literally you put a script on your website. So if somebody’s visiting your website looking around and we’ll use a pair of shoes as an example. If you are selling shoes on your site, they’re red. And that person comes back later in the day and is hanging out on Facebook, all of a sudden your website knows red shoes are going to show up on Facebook. And so it happens all the time.
It takes me down, I’m a big shopper and on ebay and amazon are kings of re-targeting. And so when I’m, like if I look at an item and I don’t purchase it,that item is following me all over Facebook.
It is absolutely true. Office supplies are my downfall, I love buttons and so office supplies are mine and chocolate. So if you’re going to start a sugar-free diet, don’t be searching around here for chocolates. This is going to show up in your news feeds.
Other businesses can do this, too. So if you have a hot prospect that you ran an ad to, you have that quote on your website and they’ve actually been your website, it’s showing in their showed interest so you can do the re-targeting. And you could target this, too, you could even narrow a lot of these down to even re-targeting fans only. But you want to make sure that those fans. So let’s go into a little bit more about how you want to narrow in to different, you want to take out the countries that are not relevant to your target.
Yeah, why don’t you cover that Janet? That’s something fairly new to me that I’ve just learned about so…
Okay, well let’s go into that, let’s quick do a screen share and show, we’re going to show where that little button is we talked about. And we’ll show real quick how to just edit that. Oops, I don’t have the right thing pulled up, here we go.
Okay so let’s quick show, back up and show where that scheduler is, it’s simple. I mean now it looks like duh! but okay. So it’s on the bottom right. You said a little icon over here and now it’s instead on the bottom right next to post. You click on those little arrows and there you go. Simple as that.
Now the other thing you want to do is look at your Insights. I’m going to actually do another step in here before we talk about narrowing down the countries. And I even checked you know what countries are best market that kind of thing. But I know there’s a few that you just. And if you’re a local business, well you should really be narrowing down who you’re talking to, if you think about it.
Absolutely.
So if you go into Insights and you go to People and then you go down you can see all these different countries. And I mean I have got a lot of countries online. And so if you look at the countries you could say Turkey, United Kingdom are just fine. You know Nigeria, Pakistan, those, I might not, those are probably not my target market, okay.
Right.
So let’s get those out of there and how do you do that? So let’s go back to the Settings. And on that main settings page if you go down there’s Country Restrictions. And there’s where you click edit and then you can add those different countries in and save changes. And it says “Hide this Page from viewers in this countries.”
So you have to type in each country though?
Yeah.
So, are you just pulling it right off your Insights?
I did that on mine, yes. But you could do it, if you’re only United States based…
Right.
I would put in United States and then just put “Only show this Page to viewers in this country.”
That would be very helpful for one of my clients. I’m going to do that.
Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of cool. So it’s very important to make sure you take the time to do that. Because when you’re running those ads to your fans only, specially, why waste the money? Why throw away the money? So you want to target that in.
So that kind of covers those pieces. I’m going to talk about a couple more ideas to build those, build up your fans. Now one thing it’s not, I was on Morris Smith’s call the other day and she was talking about how 2015, the predictions for 2015 is Facebook is not going to be as much about the likes and the amount of followers you have. It’s about the targeted followers. So it’s not about how much engagement you’re getting. It’s just about how much, how much reach that you’re getting with the fans that actually, yeah, Kitty’s here so, with the fans that you actually are your target market. And here’s my cat, so say hi Kitty.
Oh that’s fun.
So let’s talk about little bit more about running a contest. What’s your ideas on contest for getting more fans Lisa?
Well I think contest can be good. There’s a lot of different ways to have a contest. If you, specially we’re coming upon the holiday season and people are pretty active and engage and maybe you have something that somebody might like to give as a gift to somebody else. So you could run contest to win a certain prize. And using apps like Heyo will help you generate and run those contests so you don’t have to try and create it on your own. Contests are good but I suggest giving things away that are fairly relevant to your business instead of..
Yes, I completely agree with that because it’s either something that has to do with your business or if you’re a local business don’t give away an iPad. I mean, I keep throwing out the iPad but I’m just saying…
No, yeah, like you said it’s general population. So if you’re a pizzeria, give out restaurant coupon or go together with other restaurants in your area or other stores. If you’re in a strip mall and you could give away a bundled package and get those people into the strip mall so that you’re bringing people into the store. You got a pizzeria, maybe a gift shop, then go together with it and put your ad campaigns. Or stores could run same contest on all different for Facebook pages. But you’re bringing them back.
Yeah, and the key there, what you’re saying is your actually, well first of you’re helping the local market.
Right.
But also it’s relevant, who’s going to want to enter in another state…
Right.
…that’s even not going to be able to come in there. And so that’s why we’re running Halloween contests on the orthodontics pages and…
Oh sure.
They’re entering and now they’re doing timeline contests. Because their goal isn’t to collect emails, even though, you know, I don’t necessarily agree.
I know.
But that’s okay because they want to up that engagement and want to do these contests once in a while. And that’s fine so we can just do a timeline. We don’t have to do it based on, you know, put the app together to collect the emails, even though that is a little better. So they’re doing a contest but then we’re giving away things that are local like Buck Hill, which people that are listening around the country wouldn’t probably know what that is. But it’s a local ski place.
Sure.
So you want to stay local when you’re a local business.
Yeah, definitely. And when you run your ads, you can run a Facebook ad campaign and target specific zip codes, other people in that area so that only that’s going to show up in front of your relevant audience.
Exactly, exactly.
But, yeah.
Love it, love it. I think this is the way to go and run a contest once in a while if you really want to build those likes. Now let’s talk about the other side of it with the email campaign when you are using the app because I do believe that if you can get them on your own email, and I know you’re a huge believer in this, too, Lisa.
Yeah.
Get them on your own email list, get them off of Facebook. That like is great and all but let’s get them on the email list.
Well, one of the things with an email list is I want to see who came to visit my page. And so a lot of times people like you and they think you’re awesome. And if you don’t capture something to stay in touch with them, they’re going to forget you as soon as they turn a corner and find somebody else’s page. So if you can give something away to capture their email address then you can stay in front of them. You can announce contest that you have coming up and bring them back to your page. You can also edify them and share it, have them share your page with other people. And the email list is definitely something that I’ve been a big fan of. It’s not difficult and it’s harder to bring an email list together from an outside source than it is to build it organically. That way you know that these people are already interested in you. It’s more friendly. The email services say hey you have a great list, you have a higher open rate because they already know who you are. And you can do that on Facebook by certain applications – lead pages. I think Heyo has a plug in for that, too, that connects through one of their pages, but yeah, email’s huge.
And then adding that on, going backwards to the ads, you can actually download that list, the csv file, and I don’t want to get too complicated, but you can upload that and target only your email list also with your ads.
Right.
So that power of having the highly targeted audience is the only people that you’re talking to makes a huge difference. And so really narrowing the focus – that’s what Facebook is about in 2015.
So let’s finish up with talking about the promotions of the holidays because we do have the holidays coming up. Some ideas, what are your thoughts on, what people should be thinking about, specially with the Facebook piece?
Well, I think regarding whoever, whatever holiday you’re into, if you have your people, your peeps, people who are engaged with you on your fan page, have them post pictures of their ugly sweater contest or have them post pictures of all their Halloween candy they got tonight. Start talking to them and letting them engage with you asking them for feedback. And you can start dressing up, if your employees are dressed up, post that on Facebook. Give some gift idea suggestions. People are buying gifts left and right so maybe come up with some bundled packages of different gift items that you could sell for your Facebook. So you can use, if you’ve got a tube of lipstick or eye cream or maybe some eye shadow or something, package it up really pretty, take a picture of it and do a give away or offer it as fee. Have them purchase it right through your Facebook page. So holidays are big things.
People are buying more. Believe it or not people want to buy. People are ready to buy during the holidays and it’s probably more of the time. And even, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the retail type business or different type of business. If you work with those holidays, it can make a difference in your campaign. So you want to think ahead of what exactly are you going to be doing around that Thanksgiving holiday, whatever holidays that. You’ve got to think about what your fans are interested in also. Your target market – are they following the Christmas, are they following those holidays.
Right.
You want to make sure that your talking to the right people, too. Because if you’re talking around the world some people celebrate different holidays. So make sure that you’re focusing on it.
Think of a business consultant. The first of the year people can be very busy with taxes and planning and trying to get that scrambled up. So if a business consultant has good engagement on there, they can do gift certificates.
Yes.
Package it really nice and put it in together so when you deliver that to that person that purchased it, then it’s got that nice wow factor to it.
I completely agree. Good! Well I think we covered a lot today so hopefully you guys are really taking advantage of the Facebook ads, Facebook promotions. Beyond your Facebook, use that scheduler to get things prepared so you’re not doing the guessing game of oh-what-should-I-post-today. It’s just very important to make sure that you’re preparing ahead of time with your calendars. So take a look at the next 2-3 months, lay it out and make a plan.
Okay, sounds good!
Alright, thanks! Have a good day!