Many of us use social media for our marketing. I asked a few entrepreneurs to send me questions they wanted answers to regarding Facebook, and here we go! :)
What is the difference between Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts?
Facebook ads are the adverts you see either to the right of your newsfeed or even in your newsfeed. There are a number of options, such as CPM or CPC (see below) and they can serve a number of purposes.
Boosting posts simply means you are paying for more visibility for your post with your followers and their connections, or even with a wider audience.
The thing is, not everyone that likes your page will see everything you post there. There is such a huge stream of content flowing around Facebook, so they have all sorts of ways to help you see more of what you are interested in and less of what you are not. You have probably noticed that the number of people who see your posts is a lot lower than the total number of likes your page has. People who interact with your posts, by liking, sharing or commenting, will see more of your posts going forward than those who do not do anything with them. This is why interactivity is so crucial on Facebook, because it gives you more visibility without having to pay for it. Boosted posts however enable you to pay to get more visibility. Oh well, Facebook is a business after all.
When you buy Facebook advertising, what is the difference between CPM and CPC?
CPM means Cost Per 1000 Impressions – so basically, how much you will pay for a thousand people to see your ad. This is also known as PPI or Pay Per Impression.
CPC means Cost Per Click, or how much you pay when someone clicks your ad. Aka PPC or Pay Per Click.
So the difference is whether you are paying for people just seeing your ad, or for them to take action and click it.
Which do you want? It depends on the purpose of the ad. You always need to consider how your marketing activities work together, and how you plan to move people through the marketing process – see more here. If the purpose is awareness, reminding people that you exist, gaining interest or getting people to like you, you may just want to pay to make sure that people see you. If you however want to do something like get people to look at your Facebook page (NB! You can get them to like your page without actually going on it), or get them to go to your website (where they can get more info, purchase, sign up etc.), you want to get people to click and you will buy CPC. You have to know, each and every time you buy an ad, what you want that ad to do, and choose accordingly.
Should I allow people to post on my wall, or should I set it so that they can’t?
Facebook is a social medium. It is not, by nature, an advertising medium, although you can advertise on it. People do not go onto Facebook to get advertised to but for social interaction. Businesses that realise this and use Facebook to build relationships with their customers get a lot more out of it than those who don’t. By blocking posts from others on your page wall you are basically saying you don’t want to hear what people have to say. That’s not really the basis of a good relationship, is it?
However, you need to make sure you check your Facebook page at least once a day, to react to any activity, whether that be answer questions or something else. And you want to make sure that your Page wall doesn’t have content that you don’t want there. Unfortunately there are some people that simply haven’t been taught any manners, offline or online, that’s just the way it is. You don’t want to stop people from expressing their opinion, but sometimes people will cross a line and then it is okay to just delete the comment, and even block that individual from posting to the page if necessary. But blocking your audience from expressing themselves should not be the default setting.
Can you have different languages on Facebook pages based on the audience location? Or are there practical ways to reach two or more nationalities and languages?
The short answer is yes. You can have different languages on your Facebook page depending on the users language and location settings. Whether this is always the best way – there is no hard and fast rule. There are a lot of things one needs to consider, cultural differences being a big one.
Here you can see quite a good video that explains Facebook’s Language Gate feature:
http://www.wealthyblogger.com/language-gate-on-facebook/
Please note, however, that this does not apply to the page as a whole, only the posts. Facebook has a feature called Global Pages, where the whole page is different based on the audience location and language, but that is only available to advertisers big enough to have their own contact within Facebook advertising, which I am guessing does not apply to many small and medium sized businesses.
Sorry, I know this is not a very straight forward answer, but the thing is, this isn’t a straight forward thing that has any kind of standard solution which would apply to all businesses and all markets. Therefore you need to find a suitable solution for each business based on a variety of things.
Are there any tricks in making your Facebook page interesting to people?
There are no shortcuts, if that is what you are after. On Facebook, as with any kind of marketing, you need to know your target audience. You need to know what they are interested in and give it to them. Share content they are interested and which helps build your brand. It is a lot of work, but it is work which, if done right, will build a loyal group of customers for the long term.
I am no Facebook guru. Most of what I know about Facebook marketing – and certainly the juicy bits – I have learnt from great online courses . You can learn from them too!
Andrea Vahl does this great FREE Facebook Marketing training, and if you really want to use Facebook properly for marketing you really should check it out RIGHT HERE! :)
