Archives for February 2014
Navigating the Facebook Admin Panel
When you create a business page on Facebook, youâll immediately notice that things look a little different than your personal profile. The whole top half of your page is filled with whatâs known as the Admin Panel. Donât worry, only you (and other admins if you have any) can see this. The Admin Panel contains quite a few sections. Some of these sections (such as your cover image and tabs) are editable while others are informational. Others still are navigational in the sense that theyâll take you to additional administrative areas.
Letâs start at the top and work our way down.
- The top bar: This bar contains Create Post, Edit Page, Build Audience, See Insights, Help, and Hide/Show. Create Post is self-explanatory. Edit Page is where youâll go to adjust your page settings, add a new administrator, use the Activity Log (to see your activities and any scheduled posts), or switch to your personal profile. Build Audience is for either inviting people you know to like your page or building a Facebook Ad. See Insights takes you to Page Insights where you can see a graphical representation of likes, reach, and engagement as well as learn more about the demographics of your audience. Help takes you to Facebookâs Help Center and other helpful resources while the Hide/Show button hides and shows the Admin Panel.
- The top row: The main area of Admin Panel is a small table consisting of two rows. The top row contains the Posts/Notifications area and Messages. Posts shows you a snapshot of your most recent posts, total reach, and paid reach. It also offers the opportunity to âboostâ individual posts which really means create an ad that promotes that post. Messages displays any messages sent to you by other Facebook users. You can respond to messages there, too.
- The bottom row: The next row includes Get More Likes (Promote Page), Pages to Watch, and Page Tips. The Get More Likes section is simply a shortcut to creating a Facebook Ad. You can also click the See Likes link to view recent likes. This is also the area where you can make someone an Admin. The Pages to Watch section is for keeping an eye on other pages and how many likes they are getting. If you want to keep up with your competition, add their pages to this section. The Page Tips section contains tips from Facebook. This section occasionally changes but typically includes tips on how to build your audience such as âInvite email contacts.â
- The cover area: Down where your cover image appears youâll find a few more administrative options including: Update Page Info, Follow, Gear Icon, Tabs, and various editable profile options. Update Page Info takes you to a much more involved page where you can add your URL, company details, products, awards, email address, and more. Additional tabs include: Settings, Admin Roles, and More. Explore these different options and update your page accordingly. The Follow button is basically a like button. You can follow your own page and see your posts in your personal news feed if desired. The gear icon contains a submenu: Create Ad, Create a Page, Share, View Insights, Visit Help Center, and Send Feedback. It also contains links to Facebookâs privacy policy and terms. You can also edit your cover image, profile photo, âaboutâ text, and tabs.
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Cozy Up to the Facebook Power Editor
If you thought Facebook ads with their ability to target specific users were powerful, just wait until you learn about Facebookâs Power Editor. Many Facebook advertisers are familiar with Facebookâs Ads Manager which is a useful tool for managing your Facebook ad campaigns; however, the more advanced Power Editor is not as well known. Cozy up to the Power Editor and gain access to deeper insights and advanced tools that your competitors may not even know exist.
What is the Power Editor?
The Facebook Power Editor is a free browser add-on for the Chrome Web browser that you can download here:
facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor/
It is designed specifically for use with Chrome, so if you donât already have Chrome installed, youâll need to do so. Download Chrome here:
google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/
With the Power Editor, you can edit your ads in bulk as well as access even more advanced tools than those found in the traditional Create Ad dialog box. You can use the Power Editor to perform even more precise audience targeting thanks to the inclusion of external data from a partnership Facebook has with various data-mining companies. For example, you could target users based on criteria such as household size, whether they are baby food purchasers, whether they are dog owners, whether they make a lot of online purchases, whether they buy luxury brands, whether they subscribe to satellite TV, and much more. This third-party data is provided by Acxiom, Datalogix, and Epsilon. Because this data comes from actual purchasing histories rather than self-reported interests, it can help you more precisely target your audience.
If you have an existing audience youâd like to base targeting on, you can upload that list to Facebook using the Power Editorâs Custom Audience tool. With this tool, you will upload a text or CSV file containing your customer information. For example, if you have a list of names and phone numbers of your storeâs customers and want to target them on Facebook, you could do so using the Custom Audience tool â even if you donât know their Facebook names. The specific details such as phone numbers and addresses are âhashedâ which is a means of protecting that information from being revealed while at the same time allowing for comparison. Meanwhile, that information can be compared to Facebookâs active users or third-party databases so that a Facebook audience can be built. Hashing allows Facebook to create matches without seeing either your customer data or the actual data of its third-party partners.
Not only are these advanced targeting options useful when creating an ad, you can save them for use in future ads. This means you do not need to build your audience from scratch each time. This saves time and ensures that once you have created an ideal audience, it will be just a click away.
Powerful Power Editor Features
Power Editorâs targeting is extremely powerful, but thatâs not the end of the story. Power Editor comes with some other powerful tools:
- Conversion Tracking: You can create a âconversion pixelâ which you can then place on your website. This pixel sends information back to Facebook when a user views your ad and then goes to your website. It lets you know that your ad worked by directing the user to your site.
- Ad Placement: With the basic Ads Manager, you have just a few choices as to where your ad will be displayed such as the right column and in the news feed. With Power Editor, you have much greater control over ad placement. Not only can you specify placement, you can specify placement at the device level. For example, if youâre in the iPhone accessories or iPhone mobile app business, wouldnât it make sense to send your ad to iPhone users and not to Android users? With Power Editor, you can send your adds to all mobile devices, feature phones only, Android phones only, or IOS devices only. With IOS devices, you can drill down and specify which devices including iPad, iPhone, and iPod. You can even specify a minimum OS version.
- Domain Sponsored Stories: We all know how much more credible word-of-mouth advertising is. What if whenever one of your fans shared a link to your website, you could turn that share into a Facebook ad? You can with Domain Sponsored Ads. With these ads, itâs not you publicizing your website, itâs a Facebook user sharing it with friends.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Facebookâs Power Editor is loaded with powerful ad creation and ad management tools. Cozy on up to it and get even better results with your Facebook ad campaigns.
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Using Facebook to Learn More About Your Audience
Do you already have a fan base on Facebook? Congratulations! Now, what do you know about your fans? Not sure? Thatâs okay, you can do a little detective work and find out more about your audience. Use the tips below to gain a better understanding of your audience, its likes and dislikes, and problems that your business can solve.
Start with Facebook Insights – Log into your Facebook page and click on See Insights. Facebook recently redesigned Insights to make it easier to discover whatâs working on your page (and what isnât), learn more about your those who interact with your page, and make smarter decisions for connecting with your audience in the future. The Insight dashboard is highly visual, making it a great tool in its own right. To learn more about your audience, click on the People tab. Here youâll see your audienceâs demographics including gender, age ranges, cities, countries, and languages spoken. Within just a few minutes, you could know more about your audience than you ever thought possible!
Use Facebook Graph Search – Enter the search term âFans of [Your Page]â and see a list of thousands of your fans along with their interests. Youâll see large pictures of each fan along with a synopsis of some of their interests. If you want to refine your search, say for example if you want to look only at men who like your page, use the Refine This Search box in the right pane. You can refine by gender, relationship, employer, current city, hometown, school, friendship, name, and other page likes.
Ask – Use Facebook posts or post a poll to ask your audience questions. For example, you could ask your fans to share their biggest frustrations related to your niche. Their answers could be insightful and may prompt you to devise a solution. Facebook recently removed its polling tool, making posting a poll far more difficult than it used to be. To get around this, consider using a third party polling tool and embedding the poll on your Facebook page. In either case, asking your fans for their insights is a great way to learn more about them as well as drive engagement.
Take what youâve learned about your audience and tailor your posts to better meet its needs. For example, if youâve discovered that your audience is 95 percent female, you might tailor your promotions to appeal to that demographic.
Finally, consider whether or not your current fan base consists of the people that you want to attract to your business. If it does, use what you know about your audience when placing Facebook ads or running promotions so that you attract more of the same. If it doesnât, youâll need to work on building the right type of audience.
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.