Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business - Softcover

Holzner, Steve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0789738023 ISBN 13: 9780789738028

Publisher: Que Pub, 2008

Synopsis

Profit from Facebook!

High-Impact, Low-Cost Social Marketing That Works!

 

With more than 80,000,000 affluent, savvy members, Facebook is today’s fastest-growing marketing opportunity! But traditional marketing methods won’t work here. In Facebook Marketing, best-selling author Steven Holzner reveals new social marketing techniques that do work, and shows you exactly how to make the most of them. Using true case studies, Holzner introduces powerful new techniques from today’s smartest Facebook marketers...and helps you avoid pitfalls that can cost you money and credibility. No matter what business you’re in, you’ll learn how to create bottom-up, “viral” Facebook marketing programs that achieve maximum results at minimum cost!

• Crafting your Facebook profile for maximum impact
• Getting into the Facebook community: crucial dos and don’ts
• Joining the right Facebook Groups—or starting your own
• Creating a Facebook blog that attracts paying customers
• Promoting products and services with free Facebook Marketplace classifieds
• Hosting your own Facebook events: from company picnics to concerts
• Successfully advertising on Facebook, without overspending
• Promoting your business within today’s most popular Facebook applications
• Tracking the results of your advertising
• Using brand-new viral video marketing techniques
• Driving even more Web traffic to your Facebook pages
• Building your own Facebook applications

Introduction 1

 

1 Targeting Your Profile 5

    Welcome to Facebook Marketing 5

    Welcome to Facebook 7

    Getting Started with Facebook 8

    The Profile Tab 12

        Across the Top 13

        The Search Bar 15

        Name, Photo, Networks, and Status 18

        The Mini-Feed Section 19

        The Friends and Friends in Other Networks Sections 19

        The Photos Section 21

        The Groups Section 23

        The Information Section 24

        The Education and Work Section 24

        The Gifts Section 25

        The Wall Section 25

        Editing Your Profile 25

        Setting Profile Privacy 27

    The Friends Tab 31

        Searching for Friends 31

        Managing Your Friends 33

        Creating Friend Lists 35

    The Inbox Tab 37

        Reading Messages 38

        Avoiding Spam 39

        Reading Notifications 39

        Composing Messages 40

    Getting Help 41

 

2 Facebook Groups 45

    Welcome to Facebook Groups 45

        Messaging Your Members 46

        A Word About Spam 46

    Joining Facebook Groups 47

        What Groups Are Available? 47

        Taking a Look at a Group 51

        How Do I Join a Group? 54

        Which Groups Can I Join? 54

    Creating Your Own Facebook Groups 55

        Creating Your Group 57

        Customizing Your Group 58

        Inviting Friends to Join Your Group 61

        Seeing Your New Group 65

    Managing Your New Group 67

        Deleting a Group 70

 

3 Creating Your Own Pages 71

    Welcome to Facebook Pages 71

    Pages from a Marketing Perspective 72

        Viral Marketing with Pages 73

        Page Authenticity 74

    Finding Pages 75

        Searching for Pages 76

        Browsing Pages by Type 78

        Browsing All Pages 79

    Becoming a Fan of a Page 80

    Examining a Page 83

    Sharing a Page 85

    Creating Your Own Page 88

    Examining Your New Page 92

    Editing Your Page 94

    Updating Your Fans 98

    Promoting Your Page 99

 

4 Hosting Your Own Facebook Events 101

    Welcome to Facebook Events 101

    All About Facebook Events 102

    Checking Out Your Friends’ Events 103

    Taking a Look at an Event 104

        The Information Section 106

        The Description Section 107

        The Other Information Section 109

        The Photos,Video, and Posted Items Section 109

        The Confirmed Guests Section 109

        The Other Invites Section 109

        The Wall 110

        The Event Type and Admins Section 110

    Adding an Event to Your Event List 110

    Browsing for Events 113

    Searching for Events 113

    Creating an Event 115

    Customizing an Event 117

        Uploading the Image for the Event 118

        Setting Event Options 118

        Setting Event Access 119

        Inviting People to Your Event 119

    Seeing Your Event 122

    Managing and Publicizing Your Event 124

        Message All Guests 124

        Invite People to Come 124

        Edit Event 126

 

5 Introducing Advertising 129

    Welcome to Advertising 129

    News Feed Advertising with Posted Items 131

        Posting Items from External Sites 131

        Posting Items from Facebook 134

        Posting Items with the Share on Facebook Button 135

        Posting Items from Partner Websites 135

        Deleting Posts 137

    Using Ads 139

        There Are Ads, and Then There Are Social Ads 139

        Cost Per Click or Cost Per Thousand? 141

        Bidding for Ad Presentation 141

    Creating an Ad 142

        Setting Up Your Account 142

        Starting Your Ad 143

        Choosing What to Advertise 144

        Choosing Your Audience 145

        Creating the Ad 147

        Setting the Budget for Your Ad 151

        Review Your Ad 153

        Congratulations 154

 

6 Optimizing and Monitoring Your Advertising 157

    Understanding Your Campaign 158

        Tuning the Number of Impressions 159

        Tuning the Click-Through Ratio 160

        Tuning the Average CPC 160

    Getting an Ad’s Daily Details 161

    Changing Your Ad’s Settings 163

        Changing Your Bid 163

        Changing Your Budget 163

        Pausing or Deleting Your Ad 164

    Modifying Your Ad 164

    Checking Your Billing 166

        Your Daily Spending Limit 166

        Integrated Solutions 167

    Exporting Your Campaign’s Performance 168

    Using Campaign Insights for Pages 170

        Page Views 171

        Unique Users 171

        Wall Posts 171

        Discussion Topics 171

        Reviews 171

        Photo Views 172

        Video Plays 172

    Optimizing for Your Target Audience 172

        Determining Your Target Audience Size 172

        Selecting Keywords 175

    Some Facebook Ad Facts 175

    Onsite or Offsite Landing Pages 176

 

7 Using the Marketplace 177

    Introducing the Marketplace 177

    Taking a Look at the Marketplace 178

        Marketplace Categories 178

        Looking at a Category 179

        Looking at an Ad 180

        Searching for Items 181

    Browsing Other Regions and Networks 182

    Creating a Listing 185

        Listing an Item for Sale 185

        Managing Your Listing 191

        Users Can List the Items They Want 193

 

8 Beacon, Polls, and Networks 199

    Introducing Beacon 199

    Introducing Facebook Polls 201

        All About Facebook Polls 202

        Targeting Your Poll 202

    Creating and Running a Poll 203

    Monitoring a Poll 205

    Getting the Demographics of Your Poll Respondents 207

    More Facts About Polls 208

    Using Facebook Network Pages 209

        Joining Networks 210

        Accessing Network Pages 212

        Posting on Network Pages 215

        Creating Your Own Networks 217

 

9 Facebook Applications 221

    Introducing Applications 221

        Extend Your Contacts 222

        Advertise Using Prebuilt Applications 222

        Have a Custom Application Developed 223

        Write Your Own Application 223

    Finding Facebook Applications 224

        Using the Facebook Application Directory 224

        Looking at an Application 227

        Adding an Application 227

        Managing Your Applications 230

    Using Prebuilt Applications 237

        Advertising in Prebuilt Facebook Applications 237

        Gaining Exposure Through Apps 241

    Having Custom Apps Developed 242

 

10 Developing Your Own Applications 245

    Creating a New Application 245

        Writing the Game 246

        Creating the Begin Function 247

        Creating the Guess Function 247

        Testing the Game 249

        Installing the Developer Facebook Application 250

        Using the Developer Application 251

About this title

About the Author:

Steven Holzner is the award-winning author of 112 books and has been a contributing editor at PC Magazine. His books have sold three million copies and have been translated into 18 languages.He specializes in web topics such as Facebook. He has been marketing his own companies on the Web for years, using marketplace experience; banner ads; Google,Yahoo!, and MSN pay-per-click campaigns; viral marketing; Usenet marketing; and more. He’s a web entrepreneur and has three online companies, which keep him busy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction

Introduction

Facebook has 42 million users, and they’re smart, affluent, Internet-savvy people whom marketers can no longer ignore.

However, traditional marketing methods won’t work here. In Facebook, the users are in charge, not the marketers, and that’s a fact we have to live with.

Facebook members can comment on your brand, and there’s not much you can do about it. The marketing channel is reversed—rather than top-down, things now move from the bottom up. Now that your customers can talk back, for good or ill, it pays to listen to what they have to say.

Learning to live with the new rules of social marketing is what this book is all about. If you want to survive and thrive in this world, you have to provide content, not just ad copy. Rather than interruptive advertising, you have to go viral. And spam can get you kicked out.

Facebook has tons of profit potential. Facebook users are not averse to marketing—they’re just averse to unilateral marketing that feels like marketing.

What’s in This Book

This book is a survey of Facebook and where marketers fit in. Facebook has many nooks and crannies that aren’t obvious to the casual user, and ferreting them out can be tough. Here’s what’s in this book:

Chapter 1, “Targeting Your Profile”

Most social interaction on Facebook revolves around your profile, and this chapter is all about setting up this most basic of Facebook tools. You’ll learn about the various sections of the Facebook profile, which is essential knowledge for the rest of the book.

Chapter 2, “Facebook Groups”

Facebook groups allow Facebook members to congregate and discuss issues—including your brand. Users can post text items, photos, and videos and hold discussions. This chapter shows you how to use groups and create your own group.

Chapter 3, “Creating Your Own Pages”

People have profiles on Facebook. Brands, bands, and companies have Facebook pages, which are much like profiles. Facebook members don’t become friends of a page, however; they become fans. This chapter shows you how Facebook pages work, as well as how to create your own Facebook page.

Chapter 4, “Hosting Your Own Facebook Events”

Facebook events are, as their name implies, pages about one-time events that you want people to know about. For example, your store could be having a big sale, a company picnic, or a sponsored event, such as a music event. This chapter shows you how to get the word out.

Chapter 5, “Introducing Advertising”

Facebook now allows ads (it didn’t used to). These can be displayed in various places, and you can pay using cost per click or cost per impression. Social ads tie into the actions that users perform on Facebook. We’ll explore all the options in this chapter.

Chapter 6, “Optimizing and Monitoring Your Advertising”

Having spent money on advertising, you’d like to know how effective those ads are—what your click-through ratio is, how many impressions you’re getting, and so on. Facebook recently added ad analytics, and they’re improving all the time, so we’ll take a look in this chapter.

Chapter 7, “Using the Marketplace”

If you have items to sell, Facebook is up to the task with its marketplace. You can list items for sale here, and people can get in touch with you about them. In other words, the marketplace is Facebook’s classified section. It’s free, and it works, and it can be useful to some marketers.

Chapter 8, “Beacon, Polls, and Networks”

Chapter 8 discusses some more-advanced marketing techniques—Beacon, polls, and handling networks.

Beacon is Facebook’s effort to “Facebookize” the entire Web for the benefit of marketers. Using Beacon, sites around the Web can add Facebook users’ actions on their sites to the news feeds on Facebook (for example, “Ethmoid Studge bought a book on booksbooksbooksetc.com”) and include a link. Because the news feed is the chief way that marketing goes viral on Facebook, that can be pretty powerful.

Facebook polls allow you to ask your potential customers questions and get immediate results. Polls are displayed in users’ news feeds, and users seem to have no problem letting their voices be heard—which is a great marketing tool.

As you’ll see in this book, much of Facebook centers on what network(s) you belong to. You’ll discover how to use this to your advantage—such as by posting on the network pages, which is where Facebook comes the closest to tolerating outright spam. You’ll also see how to suggest a new network to Facebook.

Chapter 9, “Facebook Applications”

Facebook has recently been thrown open to third-party developers, who create applications that can be displayed in users’ profiles and pages. There are many ways for marketers to take advantage of this. Many applications can display advertising, and you can buy space in them, using various ad networks. You can also use many applications to further your social networking on Facebook. And finally, you can hire developers to build your own applications, dedicated to your brand. You’ll see all of that in this chapter.

Chapter 10, “Developing Your Own Applications”

The last chapter gives you an overview of what’s involved in creating your own Facebook applications. You’ll build an actual Facebook application and get it running. And you’ll explore—and get working—various calls to the Facebook API.

What You’ll Need

All you need in this book is a Facebook account. So if you don’t already have one, go to http://www.facebook.com and sign up. As soon as you’re on Facebook, you’re ready to turn to Chapter 1.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Que Pub
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0789738023
• ISBN 13: 9780789738028
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 273