@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Sales & eCommerce

Facebook Ad Campaigns – Are They Working?

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A World Obsessed with Facebook

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With so many potential customers on Facebook, Facebook ads should be a profitable and beneficial to your business. With over 850 million users, and 225 million of those in the United States, there is quite an audience to target through the use of Facebook ads.

How Facebook Ads Work

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The Facebook Ad Marketplace

Like other online advertising options, Facebook ads are a type of marketplace where the user bids on how much they are willing to pay to reach their prospective consumers and how much they will pay if those consumers take action.

Facebook has become a common place for businesses who are using customized Facebook Fan pages to increase the amount of fans on their page, thereby increasing their consumer base. Fans are simply customers waiting to happen. So how do you make sure you are getting a good ROI from the investment on the ads?

Basic Marketing 101 – ROI

To determine your ROI you should take your gross profit, subtract the capital spent on your Facebook ad campaign, then divide by the expense. This should give you a good comparative measure in which to determine which of your marketing expenditures are most effective for your business.

Has Anyone Had Real Results from Facebook Ads?

If you watched the video above, you heard from Bob Ford, a representative for Papa John’s Pizza. He describes how an ad placed on Facebook increased their Facebook fans by 130,000 fans overnight with a one day engagement ad.

Starbucks ran their own event on Facebook ads for World Aids Day and had an overwhelming 950,000 people who agreed to attend the event. Alex Wheeler, a Starbucks PR rep shares, “I think it (Facebook) is really effective because its part as the content experience that people have on Facebook. They can interact with it. They can actually participate. We can have these shared ideals with our customers.”

The Value in a Facebook Ad as Part of Your Marketing Campaign

The ultimate benefit, just as the Facebook developer in the video states, is that Facebook itself provides not only the venue to advertise to direct demographics, but that its very nature encourages other Facebook users to share the content with their network. This means that with an effective Facebook ad campaign, many of your connections could be made for ‘free’ in the form of users who willingly share your content with others. This digital version of ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising has proven to be highly effective for some.

“The conversations are happening, with, or without the brands participation.”

Do you want to be a part of the conversation?

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#SMWF: How Hilton Does Social Media

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Hilton has one message from their industry that rings true into their social media campaigns. Hospitality is social. If it isn’t, the execs at Hilton think it should be. Their studies into how social media integrates with travel accommodations has shown:

  1. Those who travel often are commonly also active on social media networks.
  2. Those who use these channels do expect their favored businesses and locations to be listening, available, and willing to respond via these networks.
  3. Those using these venues are not only interested in deals, but often also travel advice, and to deal with customer service issues.

Hiltons Wide-Reaching Social Network

Hilton has made finding information on an incredible variety of things on social networks of all types, quite easy. They regularly post interesting videos on YouTube that show a myriad of benefits for choosing Hilton accommodations when you head out for your next vacation.

Check out this video about a spectacular special drink created by one of Hilton’s own bartenders at the Hilton Hawaiian Village® Waikiki Beach Resort.

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Not only does this create an interest in this location and its amenities, it also builds upon true customer engagement by giving them a real taste of what to expect on their next trip, but also a familiarity that many can appreciate.

None of the above even takes into account that not only does Hilton engage their customers with this type of open information but they have also effectively engaged the employee. It looks like Hilton has taken the proactive stance that many other businesses have by utilizing their current staff to share the big picture through social media networking.

@HiltonSuggest

Social Media Guru for Hilton, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez, helps implement training for their employees on how to use social media to help take care of their customers. In a comprehensive study on using social media with their guest, they noted one very important issue, customers do not just expect their favored businesses to be ‘listening’ to them, but they also expect them to act.

A highly active Twitter account known as @HiltonSuggest stays on the lookout for those who Tweet messages like:

Although none of these Tweets specifically mentions Hilton, @HiltonSuggest still doesn’t mind offering immensely helpful suggestions based on exactly what folks are looking for in the Twitterverse. Also noticable is the fact that not all of the blurbs thrown into the Twitterverse have hashtags, which shows that Hilton is really listening, the replies show that they are also willing to act, even when it doesn’t mean a direct consumer experience for their industry.

It turns out that dbmei author had written an article that had personally touched him and his family, and yes Hilton was behind it! Check it out here.

Defining Social Media in the Hotel Industry

A panel co-hosted by HVS Executive Search and ESSEC Business School Paris was held on February 7th, 2011 to discuss what the rise in social media means for the hotel industry. Attendees were students, hoteliers and other staff, all of whom declared they are active on at least one social media network.

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Social Engagement Statistics 2011 [Videos & Infographs]

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How has social engagement helped to create marketing opportunities for building brand awareness? One reason that seems likely is that when social networking first came into our digital lives, many had no idea how to take it, how to monitor it effectively, and how to aggregate its contents to be the most effective use for each account owner.

Tweetdeck, TheTweetedTimes, and Summify are great ways to keep in tune with trends and news on your social network sites and can supply you with a smaller method of mining your own social engagement statistics.

Think Social Media is a Fad?

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Think Again!

The internet has grown by 14% since 2009. There are 1.9 billion internet users worldwide. As of December 2010, there were 255 million websites. There are 152 million blogs around the net.

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Timing Matters

Facebook Statistics

  • Facebook has over 800 million active users
  • More than half of them log on daily
  • The average Facebook user is connected to at least 80 groups, pages, or events
  • Facebook users install apps over 20 million times each day
  • Over 350 million Facebook users access the site through a mobile device
  • Facebook beats Google Weekly news in traffic in the US
  • Facebook users post 60 million status updates daily

Studies by KissMetrics have shown that the best time to share content on Facebook is at noon and then again at just a bit after seven pm. The best day to share is on Saturday.

Some Facebook users increase their following by utilizing aggregators such as YouLikeHits,  Get FaceBook Friends, or sites like Get Fans Fast for Facebook Fan pages.

Twitter Statistics

  • Twitter is the most popular among working adults
  • There are one billion tweets per week
  • That is a 280% increase over tweets in 2010, so far…
  • There are currently over 460 thousand new accounts created every day
  • Mobile Twitter users have increased 182% since 2010
  • Twitter marketing jumped from 3% of businesses in 2008 to 49% in 2009

Statistics show that the best times to tweet are between 9 to 11 am ET and 1 to 3pm Eastern Standard Time. Even tools like Timely can help users to figure out the best times to post for their particular crowd and then schedule them for tweeting.

The optimal time of day to get retweeted is between 3 pm and 6 pm, while the best day for it is on Friday.

Twitter users often utilize sites like FollowMania, Twiends, and TwitterShuffle to gather more followers for expansive networking.

LinkedIn Statistics

  • LinkedIn has over 120 million users, in over 200 countries, and more than 2 new members signing up every second. This equals one million users every 12 days.
  • Almost 2 billion people searches were conducted on LinkedIn in 2010
  • More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages

The best time to publish content on LinkedIn can always vary from network to network. Since many networks may be exclusive to their own locale or country, general optimal time to post during US times can be early morning, around 7 am Eastern Standard Time for those who are coming into work and checking status updates. Again in the early evening starting between 5 pm and 6 pm  catches many users at the end of their workday.

The best days to post on the business networking site are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Do not post on Mondays when at all possible. Friday is considered an ineffective posting day as well. While some laud the benefits of weekend post, you can expect many users will only read or research so deep during their own personal downtime. Post light reads or quick updates on weekend days.

There are many groups on LinkedIn that offer increasing connections and open networking for businesses looking to expand their local networks into global entities.

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YouTube Statistics

  • YouTube has more content uploaded in the average 60 days than three of the major television networks have created in 60 years
  • YouTube may have the broadest demographics of the big four social networks with users averaging between the ages of 18 and 54 years old
  • YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world
  • YouTube receives over 100 million views per day
  • 84% of internet users view videos online

Sites like TubeIncreaser and Gain YT Views that can help YouTube channels increase their viewers and subscribers. While sites like these have legitimate benefits utilizing them overly can have negative effects. The fact is, many YouTube viewers will not even expend the time to check out a video if it has little or no views, so increasing views on your videos can actually increase the views on your video. Make sense?

However, nothing goes further when creating videos for your business than to go by helpful guidelines during the creation process. Keeping top tips in mind is the best guarantee that your content is relevant, high-quality, and a source of leveraging brand awareness for your business.

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