Facebook Updates For Sale Groups, Simplifies Selling Online

Social marketing is one thing, but what if you could make a sale directly through Facebook? A new update to the platform's For Sale Groups feature makes it all possible.

Not familiar with For Sale Groups? Unlike Facebook pages, where you focus on marketing your business, building your brand and connecting with viewers and customers, For Sale Groups are Facebook communities where people can buy, sell and trade items. Some of these groups have become incredibly popular over the years — many have tens of thousands of active members.

Facebook users can join these communities, post about their items, view and comment on others' posts and ask questions or seek advice relevant to their industry. These groups are excellent resources for local artisans just getting started in the business world, and can even be a great way to drive visits to users' Etsy stores. 

latest addition, a new feature simply called "Sell," takes these For Sale Groups to the next level. So how does it work?

To use the feature, users can simply click "Sell" instead of "Post" when they're in the group. Sell allows users to create special posts that include item descriptions, prices and even a pick-up or delivery location. Posts can be marked "Available" or "Sold" so that potential buyers can see when an item is no longer for sale. And sellers can easily keep track of their inventory by viewing a list of all of their posts.

The Sell feature launched Feb. 10, and Facebook plans to roll out more features to For Sale Groups in the coming months, according to the Facebook newsroom. These features will make it easier for the creators and members of For Sale Groups to browse, search and connect with one another.

Sell is available on the Web, and can also be accessed via Android and iOS devices.

If you currently run a Facebook For Sale Group, you can submit your request to start using the Sell feature (and upcoming new features) by filling out this form.

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New Tool Combines Facebook Ads and Print Marketing

Ready to expand your marketing strategy beyond the world of business cards and fliers? There's no better way to market your brand than by using social media. It's free to sign up, fairly simple to use and can expose your business to millions of people worldwide. And now, thanks to Vistaprint, going from print to digital just got easier.

Social Postcards — a new marketing tool from Vistaprint, a global provider of professional marketing products and services — launches today. The tool — which was created, in part, by Vistaprint's digital services business, Webs, along with help from Facebook — is designed to take small businesses' omnichannel marketing efforts to the next level.

With Social Postcards, small business owners can easily convert their print marketing materials into Facebook ad campaigns — and Facebook ads may be more important to your marketing strategy than you realize.

Sixty-five percent of small businesses are currently using, or are willing to pay for, Facebook ads, according to a Webs survey. However, most businesses don't have the tools or the resources to design professional-looking social media ads, the survey also found. Facebook research shows that these ads can drive more in-store revenue, leading one-third more people to purchase products or services, and two-thirds of people to increase their order value. 

"Online marketing is an untapped resource for many small businesses, and this tool makes it possible for small business owners to level the field against larger competitors, engage their customers in more modern ways and ultimately grow their business," Scott Bowen, vice president and general manager of digital services at Vistaprint, said in a statement.  

So, how does the Social Postcards tool work? In one simple dashboard, small business owners can design a postcard on Vistaprint, turn it into a Facebook ad, select their desired target audience, publish it and track the results of their campaign. 

Social Postcards users will pay a low, one-time fee to use the service, and the tool comes with several different features, including the following:

• A library of ad templates to highlight things like sales, events and promotions
• An extensive library of royalty-free images to use in ads
• A simplified ad-targeting system based on demographics, interest, connections and more
• An analytics tool for seeing results and optimizing strategy

The tool is also compatible with Facebook on desktop and mobile devices, and adheres to all of Facebook's text guidelines, Vistaprint says.

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Facebook Introduces Relevance Score for Advertisers

On a scale of 1 to 10, how effective would you say your business's ads are? Soon, Facebook will be able to answer that question for you.

Advertisers on Facebook will soon find a new metric for measuring the success of their ad campaigns: relevance scores.

So what exactly is a relevance score?

Your relevance score is a number between 1 and 10 (10 being the highest score) assigned to your ads based on their performance. Facebook calculates your relevance score based on the positive and negative feedback it expects your ad to receive from its target audiences. Positive feedback includes video views, conversions and more, while negative feedback includes factors like when a user hides or reports your ad. This score is updated as more people interact with your ads and provide feedback. 

Relevance scores can be helpful to advertisers in several ways. According to Facebook, these metrics can help you lower the cost of reaching people. To help Facebook's ad delivery system send the right ads to the right people, ads with higher relevance scores cost less to be delivered. While this is not the only factor the company's ad delivery system considers, it can make an impact.

Additionally, since Facebook gives your ad a relevance score before you even run your campaign, you can test out different combinations of images and copy as well as different audiences. This way, you can see which ones have the highest relevance scores before you make a decision and launch your ads.

Plus, being able to track your changing score can indicate when it's time to rethink your ad strategy.

Just remember that relevance scores, while beneficial, aren't everything.

"[It’s] important to keep this metric in perspective," Facebook wrote on its business page. "Relevance scores should not be used as the primary indicator of an ad’s performance."

"As has long been the case on Facebook, the most important factor for success is bidding based on the business goal you hope to meet with an ad."

And not all Facebook ads are compatible with the relevance score metric. According to Facebook, ads with guaranteed delivery (those bought through reach and frequency) are not affected. It's also not so useful in brand awareness campaigns.

"Relevance score has a smaller impact on cost and delivery in brand awareness campaigns, since those ads are optimized for reaching people, rather than driving a specific action like installs," Facebook wrote.

Facebook suggests using your relevance scores to reach audiences at a lower cost and test out different ads and target audiences — just don't rely on the number you get as the only measure of your campaign's success.

"[Understand] that having a good relevance score is not an end unto itself," Facebook wrote.

You can view your relevance score using any of Facebook's ad-reporting tools as well as tools developed by the company's API partners. Facebook started rolling out the new metric globally this week.  

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Boost Sales With These 7 Social Media Steps

When social media first hit the scene, I thought three things: this is a waste of time, I don't have time for it and my customers are not here. I was wrong on all three counts. Social mediums are vital to your business. They all can grow your brand awareness and your profits.

Just three years ago I was oblivious to these tools. Today, my companies have more than 5 million views on YouTube, accumulated 300,000 Facebook followers and another 275,000 active followers on Twitter. Like you, I started with no followers and a very limited belief in these platforms.

Here are seven things we did that helped us build a presence and a following on the social media platforms:

1. Start. The most important thing to do is to start, and start fast. You don't need to know anything to do this. Create an account and commit to posting content. That’s all! Nothing is going to happen without starting. Billions of people are using social media worldwide -- proof that it’s not complicated. 

2. Post often and keep posting. There is no such thing as posting too much content. There are some “experts” out there who discourage frequent posts. They think if you post too often people will quit following you, but in the beginning, you don't have followers. The only way you are going to get attention is through frequency. Those who quit following you because you post too much aren’t your market and won’t buy from you anyway. If people aren't complaining about how much you post you are not posting enough. In three years, I posted more than 1,200 videos on YouTube, the social medium I consider to be one of the most powerful. That's almost 400 videos a year.

3. Be the celebrity expert in your space. Post content that makes you the expert in your space. Think in terms of providing information based on what you know and the service your business or products offers. Offer tips and insights such as how to, how not to, what to avoid, how to find the best, what makes it the best, how to fix it, repair it and what you must know. If you are a dry cleaner, post everything there is to know about dry cleaning, stain removal and fabrics.

4. Make planet Earth your target. Unlike traditional marketing, social media allows you to pitch the world. In the beginning, you want attention from anyone. I have followers in China and India that may never buy my books or sales training programs, but they may share my content with someone here in U.S. that can become a client. Understand from the start that anyone worldwide can see your content and be inspired to take some sort of action.

5. Create varying content. Use every form of content possible: videos, photos, quotes, articles and blogs and curating the content of others. Content sharing is the easiest and the one that may get you more followers faster. By sharing the content of a competitor or another expert and giving them credit, you will pick up followers from those that follow them.  

6. 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your content should be information based, not promotional. In the beginning, you may even shift that to 95/5, where 95 percent is information. No one is going to come to you because you posted something promotional because no one is even following you. You have to get an audience that wants your content. As you grow followers, you can increase promotions.

7. Do not delegate. No matter how important your position or how busy your schedule, you must take ownership of your social media presence. I run three different companies and I still find time to post daily because I understand the power of these mediums. I am also supported by an entire marketing department of young social media-savvy people, but none of them knows more about my businesses than I do. They help create and push promotional content, but my voice is my own. You have to be authentic. Many brands miss this.

No matter who you are, how old you are or what you do, these mediums can be great for your brand and business, but first, you must get started and get a following.

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Facebook Posting Techniques that Really Work

There’s a fine line between a scientific approach to marketing on Facebook and a haphazard shotgun approach. For those of you who prefer not to "point and shoot," a new study from a San Francisco-based social media strategy firm offers an in-depth analysis of the top 20,000 Facebook Pages and up to a quarter million posts in an effort to determine the most useful posting techniques.

In the just-released report called Engagement and Interaction: A Scientific Approach to Facebook Marketing, Momentus Media provides answers to the seven most frequently asked questions by Facebook page administrators:

1. When’s the best time to post? While weekends and off-peak hours from 2pm to 5am are the times when page admins are least likely to add a new post, those are the posts that receive the highest interaction rates. Thursdays, on the other hand, shoulder the highest number of postings during the week and the lowest interaction rate. And since a high level of postings results in a lower interaction rate from users, it only stands to reason that posting in off-peak hours means you’ll gain more interaction from fans.
    
2. How many times should I post per day?You’d think too many posts would offend your followers but the report suggests frequent posting increases interaction. As you might suspect, fewer posts reduce the chances users will see them. And while unsubscribe rates go up after three posts per day, they level off at higher frequencies. The secret is to find that balance between optimizing interaction and managing unsubscribes, which is going to be different for every business.
    
3. What type of content elicits the most interaction? By far, photos generate the highest interaction rate for the six varieties of content, with status updates ranking No. 2. Others -- in descending order -- include video, music and links. The fact that links are at the bottom is interesting, considering they are posted the most often. Photos rank at the top because they’re visual, easy to digest and they elicit emotion.
    
4. Should I ask fans to Like or Comment on my posts? Absolutely. Just by taking advantage of a "Like" call to action boosts your interaction rate by 216 percent. Momentus Media analyzed 49,266 Page posts, comparing interaction rates for posts with "Like" and "Comment" calls to action and those without. And while only 1.3 percent of status messages had a call to action attached, those who used "Like" or "Comment" showed a huge boost in interaction rates.
    
5. Should I ask my fans questions? You’d think that by asking questions you’d get a better interaction rate, but such is not the case. However, Facebook page admins looking to achieve the highest comment rate should pose questions and then directly ask for fans to reply with comments.
    
6. How long should my status messages be? According to this study, size does matter. While there’s a higher posting rate for shorter posts (especially those that stay within the 140-character limit for cross-posting purposes on both Twitter and Facebook), interaction increases as the length of the status message increases.
    
7. How long do my messages remain in the Newsfeed? In the first hour of a Facebook status update, half of the users who will click on the post will have done so, with 90 percent of the clicks occurring within nine hours of the post going live.

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How Can I Get People to My Facebook Page?

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Facebook: Where Selling Meets Social

Imagine you live in a small town in a big, old house with a wrap-around porch on Main Street. You are sitting on your front porch as people walk by on a warm summer evening. You sip lemonade, commenting on the heat, and playing checkers with your neighbor. Many of the people who walk by wave or say hello. Some stop and visit for a while, chatting about births, weddings, deaths, local gossip.

Sometimes those who join you on the porch also invite friends to join them on the porch to sit and chat. Others walking by shout a quick hello and a short bit of news without even slowing their pace.

This casual, dynamic, social environment is Facebook.

Facebook is the new town square where people connect with friends, family and acquaintances. People do not go to the town square to search for the answers to a problem or to buy life insurance. They go to meet people, to see and to be seen, to interact.

Facebook is about who people are: what they like, what they believe in, and with whom they like to associate. Facebook is where people share announcements, opinions, and insights not for any particular objective, but just to share. To connect. To be alive.

People do not go to Facebook to search for the answer to a problem, to find a product or learn about your service. The front-porch experience is about connecting and exchanging ideas and news or even just a "poke."

Can you still sell on this new front porch? Absolutely.

Selling on the front porch is not that same as selling with Google AdWords. An ad that had terrific results on Google AdWords may flop on Facebook. But why?

Consider this example. Search for "guitar" on Google. Instantly, Google shows natural search results related to the keyword guitar. As Google delivers links to information about guitars, it also simultaneously displays ads related to guitars. If Google does its job well, users shouldn’t care because the search results and the ads are of equal interest to them.

Now search Facebook for "guitar." Facebook's search feature searched content only on Facebook. Because Facebook’s ads aren’t based on what you are doing right now, which is searching the word “guitar,” no guitar ads will appear. Rather, you will see ads focused on who you are as a person: your age, your sex, your marital status, and the pages, TV shows and other things you’re into.

In Google you get to sell to the specific need that the user is digitally shouting at you. Not so on Facebook. If you were to stand on your front porch, or Facebook, and yell at everyone walking down the street that “I have a great deal on car insurance,” some people might stop by and talk with you, but most would start walking down the other side of the street.

Selling on the front porch is about engaging people where they are, based on their personal likes and interests. This is what makes Facebook such a great tool for advertising products related to art, beliefs, music, culture, health, fitness or hobbies.

Let's say sell pottery. Selling directly on Facebook (“Buy this glazed mug right now for only $150”) can turn off your audience -- Facebook users are not shopping. You’ll miss the real opportunity and will probably not sell enough pots to pay for the ads.

So what might you do instead? Tell a story based on what marketers like to call your unique selling proposition. Why is your product or service special? You must offer something nobody else offers, does or promises.

Next, craft interesting and engaging content that reflects this unique selling proposition. Are you selling pottery as an investment? Art form? Dinner plates? Are you selling to twenty-something hipsters? Forty-something professionals? For each one of these groups, you may craft a different front-porch experience that provides value to your audience, like a video visit to an artist’s studio, a buying guide for different types of pottery, or a slideshow of crazy, one-of-a-kind pieces.

Pictures, videos, cartoons, testimonials -- all about pottery -- support your front porch conversation and validate your unique selling proposition. Gather email addresses through at least one special offer that comes only through email, and always invite your visitors to share this information with their friends.

Selling on the front porch is not new. For years I have been encouraging my clients to engage their customers with a website with a strong landing page offering relevant conversation and value-added information.

Rather than focus initially on products or service offerings, first provide free information around your products and services. If the potential customers request more information and you collect their contact information, then you have a lot more space to work with them until they are ready for a sale.

The goal, once you pay for a click, is to begin to build a relationship with a customer, one where they like you, appreciate your expertise, and want to purchase from you.

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Facebook Marketing - How to Leverage Facebook to Grow your Business

Good overview of Facebook and the reasons why we need to be there.



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