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Building an Online Only Brand Using Display and Search Advertising

John Thyfault — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 06:06:28 +0000

A Case Study for a European Wireless Speaker Company Launching Their Products in the U.S. for the First Time.

Launching a new brand of consumer electronics products is always a challenge. To raise brand awareness and drive the eventual purchase of a new product takes effort and time. The consumer electronics category is by its very nature competitive with short product cycles and shifting consumer expectations.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. was approached by a European speaker manufacturer to launch a new brand of high end, wireless speakers in the US market. The company decided only to launch into the online channel, focusing its efforts on selling direct to the consumer and not via retail. While this made for a more efficient sales model from a cost perspective, it did present a challenge around building brand awareness.

The visibility of a product on the shelf in a retailer, with the ability to interact with it in person, can be a compelling experience that adds to a brand’s awareness and eventual sales. The “touch and feel” element, along with the experience of the speaker’s sound in person cannot be underplayed for a new brand. The downside of filling the retail channel is of course the product sitting on a shelf, with its revenue being frozen as it waits for a customer to purchase it.

We Implemented a Three-Step Brand Awareness Building Process for Launching this New Brand Online

We worked with our client to overcome the challenges inherent in launching a brand online in a very competitive category by developing a three-step strategy:

Raise awareness through display advertising and social media
Remarket to consumers who have seen the first “touch” with additional display ads and focused search ads
Take advantage of the awareness created by online media, driving the customer directly to the company’s website and giving them the chance to purchase either directly or with a “Buy with Amazon” link.

This approach allowed for the brand to go from being unknown with virtually no sales early in the year to meeting its revenue and margin goals in time for the holiday season.

Step one involved identifying the right target profiles and reaching out to them using the Google Display Network and Facebook. The client came to the table with a robust profile of who the likely target buyers were based on focus groups and product research. We used that profile to put the ads in front of the right consumer. The profile shifted over time as dynamic purchase data replaced static research. This was done by paying close attention to click metrics, time on site, add to cart and other metrics with a focus on marketing channel and campaign attribution using Google Analytics.

As the marketing outreach progressed, we embarked on the second step of launching remarketing programs, testing both marketing channel sources (Facebook, specific sites on the display network, mobile vs. desktop traffic) and geographies. Over time, the focus of these campaigns was narrowed to a select set of cities that demonstrated a high propensity to buy.

We Discovered Branded Ads Performed Better Than Product Feature Ads

One surprising result of the monitoring and testing of the messaging for search in AdWords was that the branded campaigns performed exceptionally well over time, but the general feature/benefit campaigns remained lackluster. Many of the individual feature/benefit campaigns were paused due to under-performance no matter how much the ads were tested and revised. Paying attention to the data was key in this decision to shift spend to where it performed the best.

The third step in the process, not necessarily linear, was to update the website to optimize it for the traffic once it arrived. The site went through two iterations in design with input from us, improving overall metrics. But most importantly, it was recognized early on that a challenge existed with brand recognition and trust for the consumer landing on the site. This was addressed in two ways: shifting reviews to a more prominent location on the site and by adding the “Buy with Amazon” button in the checkout. This created a level of trust and endorsement from the Amazon brand, as well as allowing for an easy checkout process.

Throughout the campaign, the success metrics, sales, add to carts, time on site and repeat visits were refined and tied to actual revenue. This allowed for a continual testing program that narrowed focus on supporting what was successful.

Net Revenue Goals Were Achieved in Time for Holiday Sales

The wireless speaker launch and follow-on marketing were very successful by the holiday season despite being part of an incredibly competitive segment of the consumer electronics category. The brand met its goals in both raw unit volume and overall net revenue. This success of building brand awareness would not have been achieved without a well thought out strategy that had a willingness to revise underlying assumptions and a high degree of flexibility resulting in implementation changes as the market dictated. Constant testing and refinement of messaging, targeting, ad creative, landing pages and the shopping cart were key to this success. By paying close attention to the real-time results of the marketing initiatives, constantly building off of successes and quickly ending poor performing campaigns, the brand, with our help achieved its goals and positioned the company for future growth.

By John Thyfault, Vice President of Search and Social Media Marketing

Would you like to build your brand’s awareness? Contact us for a free consultation.

Learn about optimizing landing pages to increase sales in this article.

The post Building an Online Only Brand Using Display and Search Advertising appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Facebook Advertising Best Practices, and How to Create Ads Using Ad Creator and Power Editor

John Thyfault — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 17:01:18 +0000

Facebook Advertising Best Practices & Why it Pays to Advertise on Social Media’s Biggest Platform.

Before focusing on Facebook advertising best practices: Justify your budget with the reasons it pays to advertise on social media’s biggest platform.

Facebook is more than the world’s biggest social network. Its targeting options are incredible and audience saturation is huge.

And as with all social media advertising, you enjoy cost-saving opportunities.

To sum it up: (1) Facebook’s reach hits more people than any other U.S. advertising media. (2) Its targeting options enable you to get seriously micro-granular when reaching out to its users. (3) Low minimum spends let you play on Facebook for as little as $50. (4) It’s the least expensive social media advertising available, with an average cost per thousand impressions of $0.25.

So now that we’ve seen the whys for Facebook advertising, let’s explore best practices. And, how to employ them in creating ads.

Facebook Advertising Best Practices

1. Micro Target

Facebook lets you layer targeting options one on top of another, making your audience more and more specific. Use this to reduce your audience into small sets that you can test against each other.

2. Track Conversions

Track ad conversions by adding a Facebook tracking pixel to your website. It enables the platform to automatically track click-through rates and conversions and provide you the metrics.

3. Use Auto Optimization

Facebook has auto-optimization features for optimizing conversions. Therefore, set your goal and Facebook will auto-optimize the ads and the targeting to achieve the highest performance.

4. Try Low Cost Conversions

Facebook supports you in getting lower cost conversions. Such as those where you can experiment with driving demand but not fulfilling it.

5. Finally, Use High Quality Images

And not just high resolution files, but original photography and graphics, too. The closer an image reflects your messaging and your audience’s lifestyle, the better your response and conversions.

TIPS

When you can, feature people in your Facebook ads. Lifestyle appeal tends to work well.

How to create Ads. But first we need to explore your biggest asset: Targeting.

Facebook advertising best practices includes precision targeting, which is what Facebook is all about. Therefore, let’s zoom in on some of your strongest options.

Life Events

People’s personal and business lives are riddled with milestones they share on Facebook as Life Events. As a result you can match your campaigns to virtually every conceivable kind of Life Event. The reason, users tend to post almost all of them on their timelines.

Match your campaigns to users’ lives with Life Events.

Custom Audiences

Your best new business often comes from old business. Custom Audiences helps you nurture leads and build loyalty by connecting with existing contacts and customers. This reinforces your brand and increases lifetime customer value, order frequency, and loyalty.

Create a custom audience by uploading your customer phone or email list in CSV or TXT format to Facebook.

Lookalikes: Your Audience Multiplier

Lookalikes let you rapidly create audiences that look like current customers or targets. Just upload your email or phone list to find a Lookalike audience that mirrors your current one. Also, you can use your Facebook following to create Lookalikes.

Psychographics

Demographics describe who users are, where they are and what they do. While Psychographics explain the whys. Understand these and you can expand your advertising to a wider range of audiences and micro-target within them. For example, include interests, occupations, life roles (mother, father, mentor), spending habits and values.

Getting creative with Facebook.

OK, we’re nearly ready for a walk through of building your ads using Facebook Ad Creator and Facebook Power Editor. But first let’s look at the types of Facebook ads offered:

Marketplace Ads

These standard Facebook ads are a good starting point for most small businesses. They appear on the right sidebar of your Facebook newsfeed.

Marketplace Ad

Page Post Ads.

Page Posts display on users’ newsfeeds like status posts. They’re big and prominent, but remember: Your messaging needs to be spot-on relevant.

Page Post Ad

Promoted Posts.

Promoted Posts display just like Sponsored Stories. They’re only shown to your existing fans and your existing fans’ friends. But they are a great way to make sure fans see your ads.

Premium Ads.

Lastly, Premium Ads. Premium ads run only on users’ homepages and feature “friend” information (i.e. you and ten friends like this). Plus, Facebook only shows one ad at a time. Therefore, spend is high: $5,000 a month minimum.

Premium Ad

Ad Creator: 10 Steps to Your Ad.

Ad Creator lets you create ads easily and with a decent level of targeting granularity. The steps are the same for all of the Facebook ads we’ve discussed. In this example we’ll setup a Marketplace Ad.

Step 1. First, find and click the “Create an Ad” button in Facebook.

Step 2. Next, choose your goal or objective.

Step 3. Upload photos for your ad.

Step 4. Connect your brand’s Facebook page.

Step 5. Add your headline and description.

Step 6. View how your ad will look.

Step 7. Create your audience.

Step 8. Create your account and campaign settings.

Step 9. Add your campaign optimization settings. Then hit “Review Order”.

Step 10. Finally, place your order and pay for your ad.

Facebook Power Editor

What’s the difference between Power Editor and Ad Creator?
There’s not a lot to know about Ad Creator. It gets you where you need to go – slowly, but surely. But with Power Creator there is plenty to know. Understand its features and you can do in minutes what would take hours. And, create far more effective Facebook ads.

But don’t worry, Power Creator isn’t complicated…

Duplication
The Duplicate Button lets you create multiple versions of a campaign, set of ads, or a single ad. Imagine you have one campaign and you want to test it according to two different targets. Just highlight that ad, hit Duplicate and you’ve got two identical ad sets.

Unpublished Page Posts
This enables you to create ads for the news feed that look like Facebook posts, but without showing up on your Facebook page.

Custom and Lookalike Audiences
We’ve spoken to these but here’s a recap. Custom Audiences let you upload current customer lists using email addresses or phone numbers. In contrast, Lookalike Audiences let you target users similar to your customers.

Saved Audiences
This feature allows you to save and reuse targeting groups.

Mobile Device Targeting
Remember, only Power Editor enables you to show your ads to users of specific mobile devices and platforms.

But remember, whatever type of ad you’re running, relevancy to the user is key.

Feel free to share this blog, Facebook Advertising Best Practices, and How to Use Facebook Ad Creator and Facebook Power Editor. We only ask that when shared no changes are made, and credits are given to the authors.

About the Authors

* * * *

John Thyfault

This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, and Laurie B. Beasley, President of Beasley Direct & Online Marketing.

* * * *

Laurie B. Beasley

The post Facebook Advertising Best Practices, and How to Create Ads Using Ad Creator and Power Editor appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Social Media Advertising: Driving Response from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

John Thyfault — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 17:59:58 +0000

Why is social media advertising different? What are the best practices?

The big difference between social media and other online advertising is sharing. Users’ love of divulging details about their personal and business lives sets it apart from email marketing and traditional display advertising. And leveraging what people share about themselves on social media can be very profitable.

In short, social media advertising helps you find new customers by using users’ own shared information to identify interest. Its tools let you target the right people before they even begin their online search for products or services – giving you advanced options for targeting and conversion tracking, plus the reach offered by social media’s presence on mobile devices.

Three key reasons for making social media part of your advertising strategy:

1. Targeting

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter enable you to target your advertising to potential customers using a remarkable level of demographic and psychographic data. From sign-up processes to users’ interactions on social networks, user-provided data gives you precise coordinates for targeting consumers and businesses.

Target what they do, not just who they are.

Social media is also about a users’ interaction with his or her community. This dynamic allows you to better understand who they are and what their trigger points might be – giving you powerful leverage when it comes to arousing interest in your brand or product.

The perfect application of one-to-one marketing science.

Based on the model of one-to-one peer relationships, social media platforms provide you the ultimate in opt-in advertising. You can target users with goods and services matching the needs and preferences they’ve shared. Even better, your ad campaigns can reflect sensitivity to users’ opt-out choices.

2. Reach

Social media is the most popular online activity and offers the potential to vastly extend the reach of your advertising. Three out of five Web requests go through social media, meaning 60% percent of all web traffic is social media based.

Perfect for the big swing to mobile advertising.

Marketing via smartphones is the single biggest wave in digital media advertising. It’s also a perfect native option, since mobile users check Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn multiple times a day.

Mobile ads claim the lion’s share of time spent on social media.

3. Cost Effectiveness

The targeting and tracking tools available can help you achieve very low Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) – the cost of actually obtaining a new customer. This means your pricing in terms of Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Click and Cost Per Thousand Placement can be much more affordable if a lower CPA is factored into their costs.

Next up, 10 Best Practices. But first there’s one big thing to avoid:

Inappropriate Messaging
If your messaging is off, users will opt out of your ads, lowering your display ranking and hurting future campaigns. Worse, offend one user, and they’ll tell the whole community – killing your campaign and damaging your brand. And be aware that some communities are sensitive to what advertisers know about them. Ads that they feel violate their privacy will a raise red flag with your name on it.

10 Best practices across all platforms.

1. Set Goals and Metrics

First, define your campaign’s goal and then the action you want people to take in support of it. Are you looking for direct sales or leads? Do you want signups for your newsletter, or requests for a free sample? Think it through. Then decide the action most likely to support your goal.

Make use of the guidance provided by social media platforms for optimizing your ads to accomplish specific goals.

Metrics: Decide the level of response required to judge your campaign’s success. For example, if you’re going to tie revenue to workshop attendance, decide the dollar value of each signup and the total number of signups needed to be profitable. Also assign metrics to actions that have no near term monetary value, like website visits. Put a percentage on the boost in website traffic you want.

2. Create Lifetime and Daily Budgets

A Lifetime Budget lets you select an amount to spend over the entire span of a campaign. Once set, you can’t go over budget. If you forget, you can end up in a deep hole very fast as your ads cycle and recycle. A Daily Budget controls your spend per day. You stipulate how much you will spend on a daily basis and your ads will cease showing once you hit your daily budget cap.

3. Do Your Research

Regardless of what seems to be the best platform for your campaign, take the time to explore the relationships between the demographic and psychographic patterns of your audience. Don’t just assume Facebook is better for B2C or LinkedIn for B2B.

Example: If you are advertising shared business plane leases, research shows that people who are interested in private flight also tend to be interested in performance cars. So advertising to Facebook users who are into sports cars may be worth considering – instead of solely focusing on LinkedIn lists.

Always explore the relationships between the demographic and psychographic patterns of your audience. For example, people who are into flying tend also to be high performance car enthusiasts.

4. Be Consistent

Be sure that your social media campaigns align with your other advertising initiatives. Don’t bring up question marks in people’s minds by making your ads inconsistent with what you’re using for paid search, display advertising, billboards, etc.

5. Pop!

Social media advertising is much different from paid search – where people are actively looking for a solution like yours. So do whatever you can to give your ads some bite, some pop.

6. Align Targeting Options to Objectives

A big benefit of social media advertising comes from the wide range of targeting options the platforms can support. But be sure you’re matching your available targeting options with your advertising objectives.

7. Test and Retest

Constantly swap out ad versions showing different treatments of the same content. Use the better-performing versions to keep adding refinements and test them over the course of your campaign. It’s an ongoing cycle where you continually apply the lessons learned.

8. Schedule To Your Advantage

Schedule ads to match users’ schedules. Look at your target audience, what you’re promoting, and determine the times they’re likely to be on social media. Consider week-part targeting, too – that is, running your ads on particular weekdays, over weekends, etc.

9. Automate

Whenever you can, use your platform to automatically make optimization decisions based on ad performance. For instance, in Facebook you can set up a campaign stating a daily budget of $150 and it will automatically bid for you on either an impression or per-click basis to garner as many clicks as possible for your $150.

10. Repeat!

Gather data and set regular meetings to analyze results, go over the metrics, plan changes and decide how to implement them as your campaign moves forward. Repeat over and over to ensure the best bang for your social advertising buck.

* * * *

John Thyfault

This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, and Laurie B. Beasley, President of Beasley Direct & Online Marketing.

Laurie B. Beasley

The post Social Media Advertising: Driving Response from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

How to Optimize Your Social Media Posting Strategy

wpadmin — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 23:00:29 +0000

An Effective Social Media Posting Strategy

Social media has quickly grown to become a major part of online marketing. In fact, 84% of B2B marketers report using social media in some form during their campaigns. Currently, Facebook remains the most popular site among social media users according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. LinkedIn is reported as the second most used social media site. Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter following behind. Developing an effective social media posting strategy is essential to your campaign’s success.

(http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/)

With all these different social media sites competing for your potential client’s attention, it can be hard to plan an effective social media posting strategy. You, as a social media marketer should ask the following questions. When is the best time to post on each of the social media sites? Is there a ‘compromise time’ where one can optimally post on all the sites? If each site has a different optimal posting time, then how can a social media manager manage effectively manage their social media campaigns?

Your Social Media Posting Strategy: Optimal Posting Times

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social media site with over 936 million daily users worldwide. Surprisingly though, the number of user visits decrease significantly during the work week. Facebook get the largest amount of its user traffic during the weekend, with Sunday receiving the highest number of user visits. Facebook traffic is at its highest each day between 8 a.m.-9 a.m. and 5 p.m.-1 a.m. Posting on Facebook should be avoided between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. when user traffic is at its lowest. Timing is an important part of your social media posting strategy for Facebook and other social sites.

Unlike most other social media sites, LinkedIn is geared toward the working professional rather than a personal profile. Because of this, most users log into the site and view content during business hours. The best days to post on LinkedIn are Tuesday through Thursday during the work hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Tuesday between 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. is the absolute best time to post out of the entire week, with the highest level of clicks and shares. Posting on LinkedIn should be avoided between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.. That is when the lowest amount of users are logged in.

From recipes and crafts to home décor and health tips, Pinterest is every millennial mother’s best friend. In fact, 65% of Pinterest users are women who have at least one child. Unsurprisingly, the best times to pin new content on Pinterest are either between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. or 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. during the week. This is when a majority of Pinterest users are more likely to not be preoccupied with work or with taking care of their family. During the weekends, however, this changes with Saturday morning having the highest level of traffic. This is most likely due to users having more time to browse and try out ideas found on the site.

(https://www.business2community.com/pinterest/best-time-days-pin-pinterest-01152667)

It is important to note that Pinterest users have a different viewing trend than found on other sites. According to user statistics, 52% of Pinterest users visit the site less than once per week. So it is most important that social media managers post often during prime viewing times throughout the week to better their chances of catching their audience while they are logged in.

Instagram

Instagram focuses more on image and video sharing than on worded posts, as Facebook and Twitter do. Businesses can post pictures of their products or snapshots of company events,and followers can leave comments under the images. According to a survey run by Latergramme, the best times to post on Instagram is 2 a.m. and 5 p.m. The 2 a.m. slot catches the late night teen and young adult crowd who may be up late with school assignments, while the 5 p.m. slot grabs the working users who may be finishing up or done with their work day.

(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/get-instagram-likes_n_6751614.html)

Most Instagram users view content pretty regularly throughout the week with Wednesday being the most popular day, and Monday being the least popular day, by a small margin.

Twitter

Most Twitter users visit the site and engage with content before and during work or school hours. Usage drops off after the school and work day are over, at about 6pm. The best time to post and increase the likelihood of receiving retweets is between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with 5 p.m. having the highest number of active users and retweets.

(https://neilpatel.com/blog/science-of-social-timing/)

It is important to remember that a Tweet has an average shelf life of eight hours. Therefore it would be wise to plan to post more than one tweet, the recommend amount would be at least four, and stagger them throughout the day’s optimal posting times.

Google+

Google+ has been rapidly growing as a social media platform for the past few years. With the addition of communities and interactive posts, Google+ has become a site that is greatly focused on people who wish to communicate with like minded groups. Most of the users who visit Google+ log on during the work week between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Posts made on Wednesdays at 9 a.m. are found to receive the largest amount of traffic out of the entire week.

Effective Social Media Management

As demonstrated by the above data, there is no one perfect ‘compromise time’ to post on all social media sites. Each site caters to a different demographic who will log on at different times depending on the content these sites offer. So how is an online marketer supposed to manage an effective social media posting strategy calendar? There are several tools available that do just that.

Some social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have features built into the site that allow you to schedule your post. When you post from your profile page on Facebook, a small clock icon can be found on the bottom of your post window. This opens up tabs that allow you to set a date and time for your content to post. Twitter, on the other hand, allows marketers using their Twitter’s Ad Products to schedule their organic and promoted tweets from the blue tweet button.

Another option available to online marketers is to use online social media management programs. Such as Hootsuite, Latergramme, Followerwonk, or any others to manage and schedule all of their social media content. These programs can greatly complement your social media posting strategy.

*** * The Author * ***

This post was authored by Elizabeth A. Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc.

Elizabeth Beasley serves as a social media manager at Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc www.BeasleyDirect.com. Elizabeth manages new client on-boarding and accounts, social media, corporate presentations, corporate website, and database maintenance. She also serves as an account manager for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California www.DMAnc.org, managing event logistics, registration and promotion. She holds a B.A. in Communications from National University.

The post How to Optimize Your Social Media Posting Strategy appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Corporate Facebook Marketing Strategies

beasleydirect — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 18:32:40 +0000

By Elizabeth Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc.

Facebook is one of the largest social media sites with more than 936 million daily users worldwide. With such a large user base, Facebook marketing strategies are a great avenue for marketers to promote their company’s brand, products, services, and build up a following of loyal fans. In fact, 42% of marketers report Facebook is a critical part of their business. A large part of successful posting and marketing on Facebook is accumulating the largest number of user interactions possible, such as views, likes, comments, or even shares. We’ll share how you can get the most out of each of your Facebook posts by optimizing the timing, content, and frequency of posts. (https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/)

Timing Is Everything

Every minute on Facebook about 510 comments are posted and 293,000 statuses are updated. Every day over six million likes are accrued by daily active users. One would think that with all this activity, any time would be a good time to publish a Facebook post. According to statistics published by Track Maven in their guide “The Marketing Mavens Guide to Facebook,” this is not exactly the case. (https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Most marketers post during the weekday, with Thursday being the most popular by a small margin, and then the number of posts drops nearly in half over the weekend, with only 9.04% of posts being published on Saturday. Post interactions, on the other hand, have a completely opposite trend. Facebook post interactions actually decrease during the weekdays and then increase sharply upward during the weekends. According to Track Maven, posts that are published on Sunday have 25% more interactions then posts made on Wednesday, making them significantly more effective.

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Of course, you don’t want to only publish posts only on the weekends. Good Facebook marketing strategies maintain a healthy posting schedule throughout the whole week. So is there a best time slot to get the most out of the weekday posts? The answer is yes. The majority of weekday posts occur during the workday, 9:00am-5:00pm. The highest average peak of interactions, however, is found during after-hours from 5pm-1am with an average of 2.49 interactions. This means that posts that are made during, or close to, 5pm-1am are more likely to receive the highest number of views, likes, or comments.

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Words, Words, Words

Now that you know the best time to publish a post, you have to write one. Since Facebook has no limit to how many characters can be in a post, the writer has the freedom to make a post as long or as short as they desire. Most writers go for the “‘simpler is better”’ approach, but is that really the best policy for Facebook writing?

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

More than half of all Facebook posts consist of fewer than 20 words. Posts that consist of fewer than 10 words were the next most common number. However, it may surprise you that posts with a word count under 20 receive the least amount of daily user interactions. What may surprise you more is that Facebook posts consisting of 80 words or more will receive twice the amount of user interactions than posts with a smaller word count. Several theories exist about why this happens, but most seem to agree that people are more willing to interact with a post that requires a time investment.

Call-to-Action

The goal of a call to action is to cause the reader to take a specific action that helps increase the viewership of a post. Track Maven examined four of the most common call-to-action words (Share, Please, Like, and Now) used on Facebook to determine how effective they were at increasing user interaction. All four of these call-to-action words increased the interaction of posts compared to posts that did not have a call to action, with Share garnering twice as many social interactions than the other three words.

When marketing on Facebook marketers must bear in mind there is a potential pitfall attached to using a call- to -action word. Facebook changed its news feed algorithm to penalize pages that engage in like-baiting. Facebook defines like-baiting as “when a post explicitly asks News Feed readers to like, comment or share the post in order to get additional distribution beyond what the post would normally receive.” (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/04/news-feed-fyi-cleaning-up-news-feed-spam/) The best way to avoid being penalized by this algorithm change is to use call to action terms sparingly, and find alternative ways to encourage interaction from readers.

What Is a Picture Worth?

Words are only part of creating an effective post. Most marketers prefer to add an image to increase the power of their chosen message. Facebook has one of the largest collections of online photos in the world, and as of February 2014 350 million photos (on average) were being uploaded to Facebook every day. Over 88% of all Facebook posts include an image of some kind, but does including an image in your post increase the frequency of user interactions? The answer is yes; posts that include an image saw 2.35 average user interactions per post while those that did not include a photo only saw 1.71 interactions.

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

How Many Hashtags Are Too Many?

Hashtags are a relatively new part of Facebook, with their use starting to pop up in June 2013. (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/06/public-conversations-on-facebook/) Facebook decided to make hashtags a clickable part of a post in order to allow people to indicate they were a part of a larger conversation or group, and find others who were posting similar content.

About 83.93% of posts do not include hashtags, so it is not the most popular addition to posts. However, posts that do include one or two hashtags saw a user interaction increase of 60%. Posts that had three or four hashtags also had a larger user interaction than posts without hashtags, but the percentage was lower than the posts with only one or two hashtags. Posts that included seven or eight hashtags experienced the largest amount of user interactions, but it is good to note that posts using a lower number of hashtags usually contain better content and do not need to rely on so many hashtags.

Putting It All Together

Posting on Facebook is one of the key ways a company can build and maintain a powerful social media presence. By planning a healthy posting schedule during peak viewing hours, and keeping in mind the different aspects of a post such as word length, image use, and additions such as hashtags, a marketer can greatly increase how much attention they get out of each of their Facebook posts.

* * * *

This post was authored by Elizabeth A. Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc.

Elizabeth Beasley serves as an account manager at Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc www.BeasleyDirect.com. Elizabeth manages new client on-boarding and accounts, social media, corporate presentations, corporate website, and database maintenance. She also serves as an account manager for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California www.DMAnc.org, managing event logistics, registration and promotion. She holds a B.A. in Communications from National University.

The post How to Get the Most Out of Your Corporate Facebook Marketing Strategies appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.