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You have finally mastered all there is to know about online marketing. You’ve studied all the techniques, and mastered creating spectacular posts. Now it’s time to make sure you stay on top of your game and at the forefront in your professional field. But how are you going to accomplish this? What can you do to remain an elite social media marketer? It’s time to go all 007 on your competition, and use a little espionage.

I may have blown out of proportion the underhandedness of what you need to be doing. I want you to follow your competitors’ Facebook pages. See what they are doing, and check out what sort of engagement they are getting. This shouldn’t be too hard since the majority of business pages are set as public. If you notice they are running a hugely successful innovative campaign, steal the idea and use it on your own page. I know you were taught stealing is wrong, but in this case it will make you a better marketer. No one called out The Lion King for ripping off Hamlet, or Star Wars using ideas from old samurai movies. Obviously you don’t want to straight up word for word use their campaign. Just take what you think made it successful, and make it your own. So it would be sort of like an homage. As a social media marketer for the YMCA, I’m going to want to check out other gyms and their Facebook pages. If I see that Uptown Fitness is getting a lot of engagement by showing video of the various classes they offer, then maybe I should be doing the same. By following their page I can keep up with trends and use any successful campaigns they are running to my advantage.

You can also follow basically any professional Facebook page regardless of business type. This will give you a large variety of marketing techniques, styles, and ideas. A good horror author doesn’t just read horror books. He reads anything and everything, and is able to take what he has learned from that romantic novel and apply that to his own stories. So when the three headed werewolf zombie mummy is about to attack Rebecca Johanson on the beach, it will be even more heart wrenching because she just got back with her husband after breaking off that torrid love affair with with the swarthy sea captain John Allouisus. Long story short, just because I’m promoting a gym, doesn’t mean I can’t use ideas from a movie theater’s Facebook page. If it works, it works.

If you get a chance to talk to fellow social media marketers, please take advantage of it. There are a lot of online professional communities out there, such as Linkedin. Use them to your advantage. You can easily bounce ideas off of each other, and discuss things that worked and things that failed. This is a powerful tool all professionals, regardless of field, should be using if they want to stay on top of their game.

Keep a watchful eye on other businesses’ Facebook pages. They can inspire you, and help your page grow in many different ways. Do you have anything you’d like to add on this subject? Does it bother you that The Lion King was written by Shakespeare? Do you think spying on your competition’s pages is nefarious? Let me know by leaving a comment below. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

It’s one thing to guess at who your fans are. It’s another thing to know exactly who they are using data. That is the kind of information Facebook Insights is offering you. But what kind of information does Insights provide, and how can you apply it to your business’s page? After doing a little research I have just the info you are looking for.

When you first click on the “Insights” tab you are taken to an overview. This page provides you with a lot of quality information such as page likes, reach, and page views. The information is grabbed initially from the last 7 days, but you can change the date range if you want a broader perspective. It also lets you know the percentage of growth or loss of each category in your chosen time frame. Obviously you want to be growing these numbers, so a higher percentage is a good thing. Use these numbers and compare them to the type of posts you are publishing. If you notice a higher percentage when you post recipes, then by gum post more recipes. This page also straight up tells you what type of person makes up your biggest fan base. They give you their sex, age, and most commonly used device. My target audience for the YMCA for example is women ages 25 to 35, and they are accessing my page using their mobile device. Take a moment to think about how convenient and powerful that information is. In the past, endless hours of research and guess work would need to be done to find out who my target audience is, but now that info is literally a click away. Now that you know your fans be sure to give them what they want.

The Posts page is another great section in Insights. This shows you when your fans are most active. You get information on each day of the week that is also broken down into most popular times of the day. Use this information to schedule your posts to be published at high traffic times. The page will also list out your previous posts with valuable information about how well they performed. It shows you the post itself, what type of post it was, its reach, and the engagement the post elicited. By constantly reviewing your posts, you can now see what type of posts give you the engagement from your fans. Now you can gear future posts towards them, and keep engagement levels high.

The People page goes into detail about the people who view your page. They break it down to sex, age, and location. Using the Y as an example, I can see that the majority of my fans live in Indiana, PA, but there are also quite a few from Homer City. I can now potentially offer our Homer City fans a special promotion. Maybe have a contest where the winner gets a free meal at a popular Homer City restaurant. While on my People page I noticed that I have one fan from Romania. For some reason this makes me happy, so I decided to share it with you. Don’t expect any Romanian centered posts on my page anytime soon though.

Insights has a ton of useful and necessary information so use it wisely and often. So what did you think of my blog? Super awesome, right? Do you have anything you would like to add? Please leave me your praises in the comment section below. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

Through countless promotions and tireless efforts you have managed to gain a rather sizable fan following on your Facebook page. Woo-hoo great job kid, you done good! Hmm, now what can you do to keep your fans interested? One tried and true method is to treat them like they’re in your business’s fan club. But what makes a good fan club, and why is it effective on social media? Don’t worry fellow marketeers, I’ll give you some pointers you can use to keep your fans engaged.

The first thing you need to realize is that the majority of your page fans are your greatest most passionate fans. They truly love what your business stands for, and they are craving more from you. Let’s not disappoint them by posting one boring status update a day about the same old thing. Keep it fresh, exciting, fun, and on point to what your fan base is looking for. As much as I love video games, I’m pretty sure my target audience at the YMCA would not care too much if I posted about how cool the new Zelda game looks. Knowing that the majority of my fan base are females ages 25-34 they fall right into the young mother wheel house. Now I can post a funny meme with Spongebob and tickle a few of their funny bones.

Knowing who my fan base is and providing them content that they can relate to will keep them coming back for more.

Like any great fan club, you need to be providing your members with some insider deals. Early signups with $5 off, or half off the join fee are just a few promotions we have thrown around at the Y for our followers. If your fans start using these promotions, they will be checking your Facebook page daily to see if there are any other deals they can take advantage of. This is where you will need to collaborate within your business to see what needs promoting and what kind of deals you can offer. Keep these deals relevant and something your fans can easily use.

Asking your fans for advice is a great way to keep engagement numbers up, and get insider information from your customers. People want their opinions to be heard, and businesses want feedback. By asking for it from your fans you get a huge win on both sides. I was recently sitting in a meeting where we discussed moving one of our yoga classes from the Y to Mack Park. We all put in our two cents as employees, but we had no feed back from our members. We posted on our Facebook page the question, “How would you feel about moving yoga to Mack? Please comment below.” We received a lot of feed back and we were able to make a more informed decision. I also got comments on my page… precious comments… which helps me increase me reach. I know what you are thinking… “Well did you move yoga to Mack or not?” Yes we did, unless the weather was lousy then it would take place at the Y. Having the option to move it from Mack to the Y in case of inclement weather was a Facebook fan’s idea by the way. Asking your fans for their opinion is a great way to keep people interested in your page.

Now that you have the tools, it’s time for you to be fan club president of your very own business. Make them feel special because they are. Do you have any experiences with fan clubs? Are their any ideas you have tried that worked out well? Did you forget to drink your Ovaltine? Leave a comment below and help a fellow marketer out. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

Facebook allows its users to post all types of media. Video is one of if not the most captivating media there is, so as online marketers it is up to us to use it wisely and effectively. But how should you be using video on your Facebook page, and how can you keep getting new video to post? These are great questions, but with just a little bit of effort on your part, you will be posting effective video on your page in no time.

The first thing you will want to do is to have a target audience for your video. If I am selling fishing equipment, I am probably going to want to target fishermen. Knowing who your target audience is will help you create or find a video that will better speak to them. I’m not going to post a video with a hard rock soundtrack and expect my senior engagement on my site to increase. The days of the rocking grandma are long gone. She found her beef and now she is living a quiet life somewhere in Florida. One of my first tasks during my YMCA internship was to create personal trainer fitness videos. My target audience was people who might be interested in hiring a trainer. These people would want a trainer who is knowledgeable as well as personable. I did my best to showcase both of these attributes in our trainers by having them introduce themselves and demonstrate exercises they know and love. This gave my target audience a chance to get to know our trainers personalities and education.

If you have a video you really want people to see, you can always pin it to the top of your page. You can use this technique with other types of posts as well. This will ensure that everyone visiting  your page will see your video right at the top. This is great if you have an awesome ad you are trying to promote. The more they see the ad, the more it gets into their brains, which is where we want to be.

Your videos should be humorous. Life is serious enough as it is, so let’s keep our videos on the lighter side. Americas Funniest Home Videos has been around for a long time for a reason. People like to laugh and Facebook is no exception. Know your target audience when using humor to avoid alienating anyone. Good humor can be clean, it just might be a little harder to find. Obviously there will be some situations where a serious tone is warranted, but these are few and far between.

Be consistent in posting the right amount of video. This is a bit more complicated than the other steps because it will differ from business to business. You will want to find the right amount of video content your Facebook fans want. To do this you will need to experiment with bi-weekly, weekly, and daily videos. Then poll your fans to see how much content they would prefer. Once you are able to determine how much they want, you need to consistently provide them with it. People like to see structure in their lives, so provide it to them with a little bet of consistency in your posts.

Start making your own videos. Everyone has a phone, and with a little bit of practice your video making and editing skills will grow naturally. Keep your videos to about two minutes or less. Anything longer becomes tedious and boring to most Facebook users. Short and sweet is always our goal when making a video. Remember the more videos you make, the more experience you will get. I look back on my first video I did for the Y, and it looks like a dried up banana peal on a lonely stretch of highway compared to the videos I’m putting out now. Just by making more videos, my skills have improved naturally.

Now that you are armed with video making and promoting skills, use them wisely. One of your video posts could go viral, and that would mean a lot more traffic for you and your page. Wow, only in online marketing are the words “viral” and “traffic” good things. What other ways can you use video to help promote your business on Facebook? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

You have managed to make one of the dandiest Facebook pages around. Your posts are spot on, and you are generating a lot of buzz from the small audience you have managed to grab. But as a social media marketer, you crave more more more. I know, I know you are asking yourself, “What can I possibly do to promote my Facebook page outside of Facebook?” Do not worry true believer, I have some advice that will have your page views skyrocketing.

Word of mouth is a solid way to get people to check out your page. Just by walking around the YMCA of Indiana County asking the members to like our page, I saw a big increase in page views and likes. It may seem obvious, but too often we forget to take advantage of our verbal communication skills. It’s easy on the budget by costing you zero dollars, and it really is effective. You could also ask your friends and family to like the page, after all isn’t that the point of having them?

Create a QR code to add to print media. This is one idea I never thought of until I started doing a little research, and it is incredibly simple. Just go to a QR code generator website, and create one for free. Click on that link to go to a free site that you can use. 

Pretty fancy, right? And it only took me about 30 seconds to do. So now i can plaster this cool looking deal all over our print media, and it will provide our guests with a direct link to our Facebook page.

Most companies have a list of emails that are used for various communications. Why not put them to use to promote your Facebook page? Simply ask permission from whomever is in charge of the list, and shoot out an email explaining all the cool things you are doing on your page. Keep it simple and to the point, like your Facebook posts. Hopefully this will create a little more traffic for you.

If you make a lot of videos for your Facebook page, you should try posting a few on Youtube. Just mention the Facebook page at some point in the description, or even do a shout out in the video. If people are watching your video on Youtube, odds are they will want to see what other content you are offering.

One final thing that may be a little tougher to accomplish is to get your co-workers to put a link to the page on their personal site. Doing this requires you be at least on decent terms with them, so play nice at work. Co-workers that regularly engage with your site on Facebook can be extremely valuable and can drastically increase your reach.

Please try out a few of these tips to see some growth on your Facebook page. None of them are too difficult or time consuming, so there is really no excuse. If you have any other groundbreaking ways to promote Facebook outside of Facebook please let me know by leaving a comment below. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

Everyone loves to laugh. That is why the most popular shows on TV are usually comedies. So how can we as social media marketers take advantage of comedy’s mass appeal? By being funny of course. Just because your business is serious doesn’t mean your ad campaign has to be. Insurance is an important aspect of our lives that usually revolves around a serious situation, yet all of the ads for the majority of the companies are humor based. Comedy sells, so it’s time you add it to your Facebook page. But what is the best way to use humor on your page, and is humor always a good route to take? Well after some research I have some answers for you.

The first thing you want to look at is what your business does. If you are in healthcare or financial services you need to be exceptionally careful with humor. These are no-nonsense fields that would be tough to joke about. I for one do not want a clown responsible for my healthcare or my bank account. Outside of those two fields however there is a lot of opportunity to crack a joke. You just need to remember who your target audience is. Older people won’t find video game jokes very amusing, whereas youths would lose their minecraft laughing at them. As a professional social media marketer you should already have a good understanding of who your target audience is, so make jokes that relate to them.

One great tip to using humor is to use a technique that Jerry Seinfeld often used in his stand-up routine. Take an everyday activity and think, “What is funny about this?” If I applied that to the YMCA for instance, I could poke fun at excuses to avoid working out. It happens to the best exercisers, and it is something everyone could relate to.

Something I cannot stress enough is to keep it clean. Even if your target audience is a bunch of punk kids, it looks incredibly unprofessional when you start using foul language and images. You will also severely restrict your target audience which is exactly what we are not trying to do. Your post could also go viral in the worst way possible. I’m sure you have seen many instances on the news where a business posts something insensitive, and it is always followed by an apology and someone losing their job. Don’t let that be you.

Use your wit. People enjoy clever puns or being surprised by a smart-aleck comment. At the YMCA we often use motivational posts to get people up and moving, but if you keep posting the same stuff everyday people eventually block it out. So one day instead of a inspirational post about celery, I put a meme with Abraham Lincoln commenting on the internet. It was a wild success and got my site a lot of views.

The best humor comes naturally. If your business has a naturally funny employee, ask if you can shoot a video of him just being himself. Forced humor is just the worst, so avoid it at all cost. Browse the internet for some funny memes that you enjoy, and use them to your advantage. A little humor is a great way to break up the tedium of business-like posts.

Using humor is a risk, but like many risks it can come with a great reward. So be smart, funny, and cautious when using humor on your social media page. Wow! For a blog about humor, I had zero jokes in it so I better throw one in. Why couldn’t the lifeguard save the hippie? Because he was too far out. Grab some tissues and wipe those tears of laughter out of your eyes. Do you have any other ways humor can be applied to social media? Or if you just want to hear some more jokes, leave me a comment below. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

You just had a great day at the office. You designed and scheduled some of the finest Facebook posts your company has ever seen, and you know your page traffic is just going to sky rocket. Time to grab some carrots to munch on (yeah i said carrots; this is a blog about promoting a gym remember) and check out what kind of action your page is getting. But what’s this!? Your company’s page is promoting an off color internet site with graphic images!? And… fired. Preventing hackers from taking control of your Facebook page is of the utmost importance. How can you be sure your personal and business pages are safe? Just follow a few tips from me and put your mind at ease.

The most common sense and easiest thing to do is to create a strong password. The password should contain a mixture of lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols. It should also be unique to Facebook. Even though it might be more convenient to have one password to rule them all, it is also more convenient for hackers. So make sure to have a complex and unique one for your page.

Another way to prevent a hack attack, is to activate “login approvals” under Facebook security settings. In order to use this, you must confirm your mobile phone number with Facebook. Doing this adds an extra layer of security to your page. Now when you login from an unrecognized computer, Facebook will send your phone a text message with a code that you will use to verify that it is indeed you. Now even if a hacker has your password, they will not be able to access your page.

Log out when you are done. I cannot stress this enough. I myself have posted in the guise of a friend with hilarious results. He is a huge Batman fan, so when he posted about Superman being the better man, many of his friends were stunned. A little fun and games between friends can quickly turn to something far more ugly when it comes to business pages. When you are finished on Facebook please log out for Batman’s sake. Also make sure you keep that little box that says “keep me logged in” unchecked.

Facebook does a pretty good job when it comes to preventing spam, but unfortunately some still slips through. Before you click on any suspicious links, verify with whomever sent it to you that it is real. Quite a few times I’ve seen an ad for a product I know my friend would not endorse plastered all over his page. Be ever vigilant in your web clicks even on Facebook.

These are just a few effective ways to prevent hackers from hijacking your Facebook page. Make sure to use all of them, and you will be able to sleep easy at nights knowing your job is secure. Do you have any other ways to prevent a hacker from accessing your page? Let me know in the comment section below. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to customize your Facebook page in new and exciting ways? Well with Facebook apps you can, and as an online marketer you will want to take full advantage of this. Knowing how to apply and use them is crucial. But what apps will help us marketers the most? Well I’ve found a few that should boost your reach and make your Facebook page more interactive.

To apply an app to your Facebook page, simply go to the app’s page. Click on the “…” on their Facebook page’s cover image and select “add app to page”. Select the page you want the app to be applied to and, voila! You are now rocking your brand new app. Some apps require you to go through their professional website, but they usually have a step by step guide to downloading and applying them.

A great app for any online marketer is a social integration one. They can be used to link multiple social media mediums together. This is one way you can post on Instagram, and have it appear on your Facebook page. Having an app that can do that will really help you streamline your social media sites, as well as create more traffic by bringing in users from outside of Facebook. Pagemodo is a reliable app that can help you accomplish this and a lot more.

An email capture app is an easy way to get your customers to give you their email addresses. Basically you can have your page viewers willingly sign up to receive whatever you want to send them. I’m promoting a healthier lifestyle at the YMCA, so I could set up a workout of the week newsletter using an email capture app. People viewing our Facebook page can now sign up to receive my workout of the week, and I get a nice list of email addresses that I can use for other marketing purposes. A reputable email capture app is Mailchimp . 

If you want to get some insight on your customers, then a poll app might be right up your alley. As a gym promoter, I might want to poll my customers on their favorite exercises. This would create a lot more engagement on my page, and let my customers feel like they have a voice. Engagement is always a good thing. Try out Polls For Facebook , and see what interesting information you can get out of your customers.

There are a million more apps out there, so explore and try out the ones you think will help boost your Facebook pages reach the most. I’ve highlighted the ones I know will help me in my quest to market the Y. What apps do you use, and why? Please leave me a comment below if you have any cool apps you want to share. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.

Just like in video games, sometimes a little turbo boost can help a social media marketer achieve their goals. Knowing when and how to boost is important because this feature on Facebook costs some money. So unless you are bankrolled by Lex Luthor, you are going to want to boost smartly. Now you just need some tips on how, when, and why.

Boosting is a simple one click process on Facebook. You click “Boost Post” and begin selecting your target audience. Then you set your budget because you are basically paying Facebook to bypass their top-secret Krabby patty… I mean algorithm and paste your post over your target audience’s news feeds. Facebook makes this process extremely easy because, well, they want your money. So this is why you need to show a little restraint and know when boosting a post is warranted.

If you are going to boost, you better have a plan in place. A boosted post can help you increase brand awareness, help with engagement, increase traffic, and help you promote new content. Let’s say for instance the YMCA is holding their annual Bowl For Kids event and I have a great promotional post ready to go. This event has been around for quite a few years, and generally reaches max capacity without much advertising effort. Boosting in this situation would be foolhardy, and unnecessary. On the other hand, If the Y was holding the 1st annual turkey trot I should strongly consider boosting my promotional post. This would help me spread awareness of something new my business is offering. Knowing when to boost and when not to, is crucial to keeping your budget in check.

Year after year, it is becoming more difficult on Facebook for businesses to reach their target audiences. They are constantly changing that algorithm so that non-paid posts are reaching less and less people. Facebook is doing this because, like all of us, they want money. As a social media marketer this can be frustrating, but nevertheless a fact of life. Now we must boost the posts we deem most important to our business, in order to reach our target audience.

When boosting, take extra time on reviewing your posts. Image or video quality is of the utmost importance now that you are spending money. You do not want to waste a boost on a sub-par post. So cross your t’s and dot your i’s and please check your spelling. Nothing looks worster than pour spelling an bad gramer. (my editor just cried)

Thanks for reading today’s blog and I hope you will be boosting with confidence as you move forward. How do you feel about Facebook making it harder and harder to reach our audience without forking over some cash? Do you think they will end up hurting themselves by making businesses shy away from online marketing? Leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to see it, no boost necessary. Don’t forget to hit the share button below because gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom; sharing it is the first step to humanity.