Guest Post - AllFacebook

The Dangers Of Facebook Sweepstakes And Contests

Guest Writer — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:29:20 +0000

Promotions can be a great way to build your Facebook community and increase engagement with your fans. They offer incentives for new users to not only interact with your page, but to revisit it. It’s also a great way for new audiences to discover your brand. The reality is, contests and sweepstakes can easily be gamed so that the winner isn’t a brand advocate, but rather, someone who cheated their way to the top. It’s a scary reality that a lot of brands and agencies fall victim to, most of which don’t even know it.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What The New Facebook PMD Program Means For Your Brand

Guest Writer — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:54:47 +0000

This week’s Spring Summit at Facebook headquarters brought about the newly structured preferred marketing developers program. But what does it mean for your brand? continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Why Facebook Is Paying $1 Billion For Instagram

Guest Writer — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:22:31 +0000

Instagram’s traffic has steadily risen over the last six months, reaching 3.8 million last week, up from 68,800 visits for the week ending October 22, 2012. That kind of momentum explains why Facebook paid $1 billion for the photo sharing network with over 30 million users. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Most Common Facebook Privacy Mistakes Of All Time

Guest Blogger — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:46:53 +0000

Facebook has become a commonly used resource for acquaintances, employers or potential customers to find out more about you. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Where To Get A Cover Photo For Your Facebook Timeline

Guest Blogger — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:17:13 +0000

The most visually engaging aspect of Facebook’s timeline has spawned a burgeoning industry. Many of the tools for creating cover images are repurposed from screensavers and banners, but they do the trick. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

3 Tips For Last Minute Timeline Upgrades On Facebook

Guest Blogger — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:45:18 +0000

Like it or not, all brand pages will have timeline this Friday. Here are three pointers for these last few days before the mandatory transition. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

7 Ways To Hack Your Promotions Into Facebook Timeline

Guest Blogger — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:12:46 +0000

You won’t really be able to use a default landing page to promote your brand when timeline goes live on pages. Instead, you can make use of other aspects of the layout to work your promotion. Here are seven tricks to that end. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

How To Tap Facebook Fans To Signal Search Engines

Guest Blogger — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:11:51 +0000

Consumers look for social signals created by their peers or opinions posted online for recommendations about brands, products and services, and the search engines are taking note. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

An E-Book Guide To Facebook's Timeline For Pages

Jackie Cohen — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:15:17 +0000

Here’s an e-book about Facebook’s timeline for pages, created exclusively for us by Gregory FCA. Let us know what you think of the content by posting in the comments section beneath this post. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Facebook Advertisers, Get Ready For Timeline

Guest Blogger — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:41:59 +0000

With more brands integrating social strategies into marketing plans, it’s crucial that businesses take note of and adapt to Facebook’s changes. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

7 Tools For Updating Facebook Timeline Pages, Profiles

Guest Blogger — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:29:16 +0000

Timeline has a way of making pages with infrequent posts look more naked than they really are, making it more important than ever to post regularly. Here are seven ways to get this job done. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Timeline Checklist All Facebook Pages Must Have

Guest Blogger — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:23:31 +0000

Creating a successful Facebook page requires more than just a few clicks, especially with the new timeline design.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

3 Strategies To Develop Your Business With Facebook

Guest Blogger — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:25:12 +0000

We sometimes forget people were social before social media came along; thinking of relationships as independent of technology can strengthen your business strategy.

With that in mind, here’s how to achieve three key marketing objectives.

Drive Awareness

Driving awareness requires you to reach as many relevant users as possible. People usually have strong ties to only a handful of their connections, but social media has considerably increased reach — the average user has 140 connections, up from about 100 a year ago.

Users may not always value purchasing advice from every single one of their connections, but if friends share content, people are most likely to see it.

And if the content is appealing, users are most likely to click it. This applies especially to videos.

A great way to drive awareness is to create videos that people want to share. Sharing content on Facebook does not always feel as instinctive as liking or commenting, so the video must be compelling.

Generate Sales

Generating sales requires that you tap into a much different social network structure.

As Paul Adams, a product development manager at Facebook, points out, people talk to the same five to ten people 80 percent of the time. People are tightly connected to five small groups, on average, with which they share a common interest or affinity.

Influence can be so strong between these few connections that it can actually generate sales. To generate sales via social media, create very exclusive offers rather than pitching the same stuff to everyone at once.

This way, users are incentivized to share them with their most relevant and trusted connections. Doing so will maximize your sales.

Increase Loyalty

Increasing loyalty is another very valuable way to leverage social media.

Promote your Facebook page wherever you have access to your customers, so that they like it (of course, this can be offline). Then, provide these customers with engaging content that will start a conversation between your customers, their friends and your brand.

Since the objective here is to start a conversation, this content should be more about your customers than about you.

Getting your customers to engage with your content is crucial. It will deepen your relationship with them and increase their loyalty. It will also turn your customers into your best advocates and your most valuable assets in social media.

In short, Facebook can help you achieve key marketing objectives with unprecedented results. But you should not try to apply old media strategies to social media.

Instead, brands on Facebook should see themselves as regular users, and provide valuable input to start conversations around their content. Ultimately, this will help you boost sales.

Guest writer Olvier Lasry is the founder of Wingsplay. Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Early Bird's Guide To Timeline On Facebook Pages

Guest Blogger — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:11:22 +0000

Timeline will become the most effective online tool for brand building whenever Facebook releases the feature for brand pages.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Put Your Facebook Sponsored Like Stories On Steroids

Dennis Yu — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:10:04 +0000

People who see your ads see the names of their friends who like you!

See how The Washington Post is using Sarah Palin’s thumbs up to attract new fans?

Akin to a sponsored like story, but with a twist: Using the endorsement of others to peer pressure others into doing the same.

Except in this case, it’s amplifying the fact that someone famous likes you.

Google realizes the power of social context and is incorporating their +1′s and Google Plus results across the search giant’s entire network. Things that your friends have done show up first.

So do this:

Search for “thumbs up” to find some images of people giving a thumbs up. Your friends show up first — see Danny Dover and Steve Garfield, for example. I suppose that Danny’s thumbs up in a cast only sort of qualifies, while the sports car image shows Google’s image recognition is fallible.
Create a Facebook ad that uses these pictures (with permission, of course) in ads targeted at friends of fans.
Sit back and watch Facebook’s ad system do the work for you. By using Facebook’s “friend of fan” connection feature, you guarantee that people see your ad only when one of their friends is a fan. Of course, this tactic really starts to work the more fans you have. We recommend 500 fans if you’re a local business, 50,000 fans if you’re a national niche player, and 250,000 fans if you’re a national brand.

Dennis Yu has helped brands grow and measure their Facebook presences. He has spoken at Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies, Web 2.0, The American Marketing Association, PubCon, Conversational Commerce Conference, Pacific Conferences, HostingCon, Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Convention, UltraLight Startups, MIVA Merchant, and other venues. Yu has also counseled the Federal Trade Commission on privacy issues for social networks. Yu has held leadership positions at Yahoo and American Airlines. His educational background is finance and economics from Southern Methodist University and London School of Economics.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.