Chapter 2

Creating Your Facebook Marketing Plan

In This Chapter

Researching and targeting your ideal audience on Facebook

Finding new connections using Facebook’s Graph Search

Understanding the core rules for a successful Facebook Page

Creating a Facebook team that will help grow your community

Measuring the success of your Facebook investment

Facebook has changed the game of marketing for everyone. In the past, people who were interested in your products or services would read a brochure, visit your bricks-and-mortar shop, or maybe watch a commercial to find out the information they needed before making a buying decision. Today, people go to Google or search popular social networks for answers to their questions instead. That’s why you need an online presence, in real time, to answer their questions when they seek you out. After all, if you make customers wait, they can be knocking on a competitor’s virtual door with a click of a button. With that in mind, it’s essential that you create a solid, well thought-out Facebook marketing plan that defines your goals and maps your online strategies.

By the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to start putting your Facebook marketing plan to work. Begin by defining your target audience and finding that audience inside the virtual walls of Facebook.

Defining Your Ideal Audience on Facebook

Facebook has more than one billion active users as of this writing, so more likely than not, your brand will find an audience on Facebook. The key here is finding out where they are and what they do while they’re inside this thriving social network.

The first step in creating a Facebook marketing plan involves articulating your brand. You want to determine who you are and who your customers are.

Ask yourself what’s unique about your product or service, and what about your product or service attracts buyers. Are you a life coach who teaches people how to find a career aligned with their true passion? Are you a yoga teacher who lives a green lifestyle and sells organic specialty soaps online? In a nutshell, who are you, and what do you do? After you get clear about your brand, you can identify your ideal audience.

Identifying the demographics of your ideal audience

Before you begin marketing on Facebook, you want to compile all the information you already have regarding the demographics of your ideal audience. Commonly used demographics include gender, race, age, location, income, and education.

If you haven’t done this research, one way to approach finding your target demographic is to survey your existing customers. Ask them questions to find out their specific demographics to help you understand who is buying your products or services.

To help survey your audience, you can use inexpensive (and often free) online tools to make the process easy and anonymous for your audience. Two great sites to explore are Polldaddy (www.polldaddy.com) and SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com).

With your audience demographic information in hand, using the tips and techniques we highlight in this chapter, you can research similar Facebook users to find potential customers to target inside Facebook. The more information you collect before you start to market on Facebook, the more success you’ll have finding potential clients. As you dig deeper into Facebook marketing in this chapter, we show you precisely how to use your existing information to find your ideal audience on Facebook.

Understanding the psychographics of your ideal audience

The more you understand your target audience, the better equipped you are to keep the attention of your existing audience and attract new clients as well.

Psychographics are attributes often related to personality, values, attitudes, or interests. Figuring out what a person likes or dislikes, or even favorite hobbies, can be priceless information as you market your products or services because the more you know about your ideal audience, the better you can create marketing messages that will grab their attention and encourage them to take action. You have different ways to figure out the psychographics of your ideal audience:

• Ask them. Use your social media networks to post engaging, thought-provoking questions to learn more about your audience. Ask them about their interests, hobbies, and needs. People love to talk about themselves, and if they trust you, they’ll often reveal even more than you initially asked.
• Try online surveys. As we mention earlier in this chapter, offering prizes or giveaways in exchange for information is a great strategy to get people to participate in your surveys. Remember: The more you know, the smarter you can be in your overall marketing activity.
• Figure out what your customers want to know from you. What information do you have that they want? If you cast too wide of a net, you’re likely to come up short in the end. Make sure to stay focused on the people who matter most to your business’s success.
• Find out where your audience spends time while on Facebook. What Facebook Pages do they interact with often? Who do they follow? What do they post in their own personal Facebook Profiles? This information will tell you a lot about your Facebook audience. (In Book IX, we walk you through how to use the Facebook tracking tool, Insights, as well as third-party monitoring tools. Understanding these tools will help you monitor your ideal audience’s activity and interactions on Facebook.)

After you know what your business is about, what you’re selling, and who your audience is, you want to spend a little time on your tone. In other words, you want to talk to your Facebook audience in a manner that they’re familiar with.

Always stay conversational, but try to use words and phrases that they use in their everyday conversations. If your audience is 14-year-old boys who love to skateboard, for example, you’ll talk to them much differently than you would to an audience of new moms looking to connect with other moms. When you know your audience’s lingo and style of communication, you can quickly become part of the community.

Finding Your Ideal Audience inside Facebook

One of the biggest benefits of marketing on Facebook is that you have access to the information that Facebook users add to their personal Profiles. Depending on users’ Profile privacy settings, you may be able to see their date of birth, marital status, hometown, current location, political views, religious views, employment details, hobbies, interests, and bios. In the past, with traditional marketing, people would pay big bucks for this type of information, but now it’s free to you — and at your fingertips.

Facebook’s Graph Search is a great tool you can use to research your audience on Facebook. Enter keywords in the search field, and the people, groups, and Pages related to your keyword(s) will show up in the search results.

Facebook’s Graph Search is also powerful way to get to know your Facebook fans. When you do a search using Graph Search, you are not limited to keyword searches. You can gain insight into your Facebook Page fanbase.

For example, you see other pages liked by women who like your Facebook Page (as shown in Figure 2-1). This information not only can give you insight into your fans’ personalities, but it can also help you discover partnerships that you didn’t know existed. For example, based on the information you’ve received about your business, you might want to reach out to one of these other pages to see if there’s a mutually beneficial relationship to explore. This tool is a very powerful one, to say the least.

Here’s how to use Facebook Search:

1. Log in to your Facebook account, and locate the search query field at the top of the page.
2. Enter the keyword or phrase you want to search for.

   Facebook displays top results a variety of ways to filter your search.

3. Select the search query you like to view: Groups, Pages, Hashtags, Apps, Posts, and Web Results.

   To check out an example of a Facebook Search query, see Figure 2-1.

You can search for the following types of content depending upon the search phrase you use:

• Pages
• Places
• Groups
• Apps
• Events
• Music
• Web Results
• Posts by Friends
• Public Posts
• Posts in Groups

You can also conduct more complex searches using Graph Search. For example, Figure 2-1 displays pages liked by women who also like John Haydon, digital marketing, and Blackbaud.

Here are several search queries to get you started:

• Favorite interests of people who like [name of your page]
• Favorite interests of people who like [name of your page] and Susan G. Komen
• Groups of people who like [name of your page]
• Pages liked by people who like [name of your page]
• Pages liked by women who like [name of your page]
• Pages liked by men who like [name of your page]
• Fans of [your page] and [name of your page]
• Restaurants in [your city] visited by people who like [name of your page]
• Pages like by people who live in [your city] and like [name of your page]

After you click a specific category or query, the search results for that keyword show up in one stream. Figure 2-2 shows an example search for the word sushi in the category Places.

Filtering Facebook Search results

After you complete your search inquiry, what do you do with all that info? Here are a few strategies for putting that info to use in going after your ideal audience on Facebook:

• Send a Friend request. Identify the Facebook users you want to target, and Friend them on Facebook. If the Facebook user has enabled messaging, you may be able to send him a personal e-mail via Facebook. Sending a personal note is smart, but make sure they are really a friend! Otherwise, you run the risk of offending a potential customer.

  Be mindful when sending personal messages to people you do not yet personally know. Be careful to not come across as “spammy” or too pushy. Keep the tone friendly, casual, and to the point.

  

• Ask them to join your Page. Invite your targeted users to like your Page by sending them an e-mail inside Facebook, including the link to your Facebook Page, and requesting that they check out your Page and click the Like button to join your community. In the e-mail, briefly tell them why it’s a good idea to join your Page.
• Join the groups that count the most. The best strategy is to join active Facebook groups related to your brand or niche and become part of that community. After joining, consistently post helpful tips that will eventually connect people to your Facebook Page, as shown in Figure 2-3.

Using Facebook Ads to research your ideal audience

Even if you don’t plan to use Facebook Ads as part of your overall Facebook marketing plan, you can still benefit from the Facebook Ads platform to find out to what degree your target audience is on Facebook.

Here’s how you can access this valuable information:

1. Log in to your Facebook account, and click the drop-down menu next to the word Home in the top-right corner of your page.
2. From the drop-down menu, choose Create Ads.

   You’re taken to the Ads dashboard. “What kind of results do you want for your ads?” appears at the top of the page with several choices.

3. Select Page Likes on the left and then choose your Page on the right.

   

4. On the next screen, below Audience, type a country name.

   You can get more specific by choosing states, provinces, cities, and zip codes. You can enter multiple states, cities, and zip codes in the same location field. However, if you enter two or more countries in the country field, you will lose the option to list states, cities, and zip codes. You want to drill down as much as possible to get a good representation of your ideal client on Facebook.

5. (Optional) Indicate a specific age or an age range, or specify gender.
6. In the Interests section, enter a keyword that describes your audience.

   After you type in a keyword, a drop-down menu appears, as shown in Figure 2-4.

7. Choose keywords that Facebook identifies as best choices based on your initial keyword.
8. Press Enter/Return.

   Then you can be even more specific by selecting subcategories.

To better understand the physical location of your fans, take a look at the demographics data in your Insights dashboard (the area where you will find metrics details for your Facebook Page). You can find out more about Insights in Book IX, Chapter 2.

Suppose that you choose cross-country skiing as your keyword because you know that your target audience consists of avid cyclists who will likely mention cycling in their personal Profiles. After you choose this keyword, you will see other related interests. You can click any of the boxes that also relate to your target audience and thereby drill-down on your target audience even more, as shown in Figure 2-5.

After you enter the appropriate information for location, demographics, and interests, a number on the right side of the screen shows you how many people on Facebook match your ideal target audience criteria, as shown in Figure 2-6. If you have that nugget of information, you know whether your target audience is on Facebook.

Identifying Your Facebook Marketing Plan’s Core Goals

With Facebook growing by the minute, there’s no question that it must be a part of your marketing mix. These days, however, it’s not enough to just sign up for a Facebook account, put up a Facebook Page, and hope that potential readers find you.

Book II is dedicated to showing you everything you need to know about the importance of a Facebook Page and how to strategically set one up. To set up your Facebook marketing foundation, however, it’s essential to create a Facebook marketing plan or strategy. Think of your strategy as a road map — the directions you need to create a thriving, active, loyal community on Facebook.

The strategy behind a Facebook marketing plan doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be carefully thought out. When it comes to growing a brand on Facebook, business owners and marketers commonly become stuck, often because they overcomplicate things. The goal of this section is to help you create a Facebook marketing plan without going absolutely crazy in the process.

Defining your Facebook marketing goals

As you think about crafting your Facebook marketing plan, understand what Facebook can do for your business.

Consider these Facebook marketing goals as you craft your new plan:

• Increasing overall exposure
• Building brand awareness
• Creating a loyal, engaged community
• Listening to your clients’ needs, interests, and feedback
• Monitoring what people are saying about your brand
• Driving action (often in the form of sales of your products or services)

These six core goals will help you shape the specific outcomes you want to achieve from your Facebook marketing plan. We explore these core goals throughout the book to ensure you have the tools to create a successful Facebook marketing plan. One of the first steps when creating your marketing plan and determining your goals is to decide on a social media budget.

Deciding on a social media budget

You’ve likely heard that social media marketing is free. We’re sorry to break it to you here, but that’s not exactly the case. It can be free, but in some areas, we encourage you to consider spending a little money to take your campaign to a professional level.

Here are three areas where you should consider spending a little money:

• Branding: We suggest that you hire a designer to create a look and feel for all your social media profiles. All your profiles should be consistent across channels and match your branding as much as possible. With everything that you need easily accessible online these days, finding a designer for this task is affordable and quick. Sites like www.freelance.com and www.tweetpages.com are great resources to find designers to create your social media profiles. In Book III, Chapter 2, we show you how to use custom apps to brand your Facebook Page.
• Social media consulting: We often suggest that entrepreneurs and businesses that are new in the social media arena spend a little money educating themselves. Although we don’t suggest that you run out and hire someone to take over your social media activity, we do suggest that you consult a social media expert for a review of your social media strategy to gain feedback on and insight into your new plan.
• Facebook Ads: The third area you may want to consider budgeting leads you right into the next section.

Deciding whether a Facebook Ads campaign is right for you

Consider experimenting with Facebook Ads, even if you only plan to test them for a limited time with a small budget. You may be pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of this advertising channel — Facebook Ads allow you to promote your business, get more likes for your Facebook Page, and drive more leads to build up your sales funnel.

Facebook Ads are so popular because its targeting is like that of no other advertising vehicle available today. You can target by gender, age, race, location, and interests — and even by who is or who isn’t a liker of a specific Facebook Page. It’s an impressive tool worth checking out, for sure.

We spend an entire minibook (Book VIII, to be exact) exploring Facebook Ads in greater depth.

After you establish your core goals for your Facebook marketing plan, you can focus on creating a successful Facebook Page.

Rules for Successful Facebook Pages

One of the most important questions to ask as you create your Facebook marketing plan is, “What do I want to achieve with my Facebook Page and overall marketing on Facebook?”

To help you sort through the many layers of Facebook marketing, consider nine core rules as you create your Facebook Page:

• Be deliberate, and manage expectations.
• Focus on smart branding.
• Create fresh content.
• Give your Page a human touch.
• Cultivate engagement with two-way dialog.
• Encourage fan-to-fan conversations.
• Make word-of-mouth advocacy easy.
• Create consistent calls to action.
• Monitor, measure, and track.

Dive into the following sections to explore the nine core rules for a successful Facebook Page.

Rule #1: Be deliberate, and manage expectations

Before you do anything else, decide why you want to have a presence on Facebook. What is your overall vision for your Page? Often, your vision for Facebook will be aligned with your overall company vision.

If you own a high-end clothing store for women, for example, your company vision may be to offer the highest fashion and the best-quality clothing in your area to make women feel great about how they look. On Facebook, your vision for your store may be to create a community for women who love high fashion, giving them a place to talk about clothes and share ideas. Your Facebook Page can become a hub for fashion-minded women (and the best place for you to engage with your ideal audience on Facebook).

Having a clear vision does two things:

• Allows you and your team to clearly understand why you’re on Facebook. When you understand the why, your actions are deliberate and have purpose.
• Helps you communicate your vision to your Facebook fans, who then will know how to interact with your Page.

Your vision is only as strong as the person or team behind it. It’s up to you to spread the word. The good news is that after you have a solid fan base, your fans will help spread your message and virally attract new followers. It’s up to you to sell your vision to get others to pay attention.

Rule #2: Focus on smart branding

One way to understand the power of a Facebook Page is to look at it as a mini version of your own website. Some of the most successful Facebook Pages act as an extension of the brand and are essentially mini websites inside Facebook. Smart branding allows you to create a bridge from Facebook to your website. The key is to create a Page that sparks familiarity with your brand when your existing customers visit your Page.

Here are two examples of Facebook Pages (one of which is shown in Figure 2-7) that do a great job of mirroring their website branding. Check them out to see branding done right.

• Social Media Examiner
• Website: www.socialmediaexaminer.com
• Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/smexaminer
• Best Friends Animal Society
• Website: http://bestfriends.org
• Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/bestfriendsanimalsociety

You can’t expect that consumers on Facebook will find you easily and automatically. Facebook users typically don’t search actively for a brand’s Facebook Page; instead, most users stumble upon a Page, either through a Friend’s Page or from a hub such as your website. Branding your Page allows you to make your Page dynamic (stand out above the rest) and more viral (increasing the number of people who will see it).

Rule #3: Create fresh content

To get the most reach for your content, do the following:

• Make sure that your content educates, entertains, and empowers your fans. This will pique their interest and keep them coming back for more.
• Publish everything you have in as many places as possible. You want to get your content online and seen by as many prospects as possible.
• Monitor what others are publishing. If you see something that would be valuable to your audience — and isn’t in direct competition with your business — publish that content (and make sure to give the content’s publisher credit for it!). Third-party publishing is a great way to continue to add value for your fans without having to create all the content yourself.

To help create content consistently, we suggest that you create an editorial calendar. It’s a very simple task.

1. Create a six-month digital calendar.

   Use a word processing program like Microsoft Word, or find a digital calendar online. One of our favorite digital calendar sites is www.calendarsthatwork.com. Google calendars is also an excellent tool to use.

2. Decide how often you want to create content, and in what form.

   Consider creating some of these:

   • Blog posts
   • Video posts
   • Articles
   • Reports
   • Podcasts

     Or create any other form of media you know your audience will like. Mix it up, delivering your content in many formats to attract a wider reach of ideal clients.

3. Brainstorm content ideas related to your brand or niche.

   Again, think of what interests your clients most. (Hint: Check out your competition’s content. This will help you decide what may be best for your audience.)

4. Create a calendar of content.

   Choose the specific dates on which you plan to post, and list the topic of the content and the type of delivery. You might add the following in the June 18 box, for example: Blog post and Facebook update on “How to Create a Facebook Page.” It’s as easy as that!

Stay diligent with your content calendar. After you create it, stick with it. The more disciplined you are in sticking to your content calendar, the more traction you will gain with your audience.

Rule #4: Give your Page a human touch

To give your Page a human touch, highlight the team behind it. Your fans don’t want to connect with your brand or product; they want to connect with you. As you have likely heard numerous times, social media is about transparency and authenticity. People want to know that they’re communicating with the real you; that’s why first names and photos are the norm on Facebook.

Brands that allow their Page administrators to have real conversations with their fans are much more likely to have active, engaging Pages. Here are a few key strategies to give your Facebook Page a human touch:

• Address your fans by their first names, and craft your posts in the first-person singular voice.
• Use a conversational tone in your posts.
• Encourage your Page administrators to add their names at the end of their posts, as shown in Figure 2-8.
• If you have multiple admins, add your Page administrators’ photos and bios on a custom tab. This allows your fans to get to know the people who are representing your Page.

Don’t make your Page another static website. Give it a human touch by encouraging your admin team members to be themselves and communicate with your fans as though they were talking to their friends, and give each post that spark of personality (see Figure 2-9).

Rule #5: Cultivate engagement with two-way dialog

In a nutshell, engagement is about getting your fans to take action, which means posting on your Page, commenting on your posts, clicking the Like button next to your posts, and sharing your content. A well-executed engagement strategy takes time and effort. More than anything, engagement is really about showing up daily and taking a genuine interest in the likes, interests, and opinions of your fans.

An effective engagement plan is about your fans and not about you. Remember that people love to talk about themselves, so craft your posts and questions around them, and you’re sure to see some great conversations begin to surface on your Page. Check out Figure 2-10 for an example of a question that’s about the user — not about a brand.

A massive fan base left disengaged is a recipe for disaster! Take action; start talking with your fans regularly.

Rule #6: Encourage fan-to-fan conversations

The key here is to enhance your fans’ experience by creating a community that encourages peer-to-peer communication. Here are key strategies you can use to get fans talking to one another:

• Showcase fans. Create a Member of the Month campaign or an opportunity to spotlight your fans directly on your Facebook Page. When fans are recognized, they tell their Friends, which encourages even more fan-to-fan interaction.
• Recognize top contributors. When you have someone on your Page who likes to answer questions from fans, or who often offers tips or suggestions, take advantage of that enthusiasm. Ask the fan to be an ambassador for your Page, and encourage him to help out when appropriate. Give your biggest advocates specific guidelines and responsibilities, and reward them with perks. Their involvement will free up time for you to concentrate on other ways to grow your Page.

Booshaka (http://booshaka.com) is a Facebook app that allows you to rank your Facebook fans by engagement, starting with the most engaged at the top of the list.

Rule #7: Make word-of-mouth advocacy easy

It’s a fact that customers trust their friends and other customers more than they trust a brand. Think of it this way. If you were going to buy a new pair of running shoes, who would you listen to: your good friend who is an avid runner and who just purchased a pair, or the shoe manufacturer that’s posting a promotion about those shoes on its Facebook Page? Gravitating toward the person you have a relationship with is human nature. That’s precisely why word-of-mouth advocacy is essential.

To encourage word-of-mouth advocacy, make it easy for your fans to talk about you. Here are a couple of suggestions:

• Ask a fan to like a post or share a post. When you post a link to a new article on your Facebook Page, add a line at the end of the post that says, “If you like this article, please click the link to share it with your friends!” Keep the tone light and conversational, and your fans will be happy to oblige.
• Do something that encourages self-expression. People love to talk about themselves and share their thoughts, feelings, and feedback. Create an experience that makes them want to share your content with their friends. This is how the viral experience is created. To do this, you can create a poll on your Page or run a contest that gets your audience excited about engaging with you. We mention testing polls earlier in this chapter. (To find out more about contests on Facebook, check out Book VI, Chapter 2.)

Rule #8: Create consistent calls to action

To move your fans to action, you need to give them a reason to take action. Discounts or specials are great ways to reward your clients. You’re saying, “Hey, I really appreciate your being a fan. Thanks for coming on over. I want to do something special for you now.”

• Give out discount codes.
• Create a special custom app for your Page (see Book V, Chapter 2) and allow your fans to print the coupons.
• Ask fans to sign up for your online newsletter or a giveaway. This strategy is considered to be an opt-in strategy, and with custom apps, you can easily create an opt-in box (see Figure 2-11) to collect the names and e-mail addresses of your fans. Again, check out Book V, Chapter 2 for details about customized apps.

You want to keep your fans happy and get them to take action. Everybody loves a discount or a special, so think of ways you can incorporate these items into your Facebook marketing plan.

Rule #9: Monitor, measure, and track

Although it may not sound like a fun task, it’s essential that you monitor, measure, and track your Facebook activity.

In Book IX, we explore in depth the various ways for you to do this, but for the sake of your Facebook marketing plan, have surefire methods that let you consistently track your Facebook marketing progress.

The great thing about social media marketing is that it’s not set in stone. In the past, you would have to print a marketing brochure for thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars and then cross your fingers, hoping that it worked because if it flopped, you had to wait until that brochure ran out and then spend a handful of money to test something new.

On Facebook and other social sites, most of the time tweaking a marketing campaign is as easy as clicking a button. That’s a huge advantage of marketing online.

The key here is being diligent about testing what’s working and instantly tweaking what’s not. When you get into this habit, you can see progress much faster than you ever did with traditional marketing endeavors.

Summing up the nine rules

There’s a lot of noise on the web about the do’s and don’ts of social media marketing, and it tends to be overwhelming. This chapter’s nine core rules are meant to simplify your process.

If you add a bunch of extra components to the rules, you’re less likely to see the results you want — or, worse, you’re likely to get overwhelmed and not take action. In short, ignore the chatter, and stick to the plan.

Creating a Facebook Page is fairly simple, but growing its momentum and getting it to thrive takes time, dedication, and some planning. Don’t expect to create a Page and then see a massive following instantaneously. Create valuable content, encourage fans to share your Page with their friends, and tell people about it. With time and patience, you’ll see your Page grow.

Setting Up Resources and Manpower for Your Plan

After you nail down what goes into your Facebook marketing plan, you’ll want to explore what resources and manpower you have at your disposal. If you’re an entrepreneur or the owner of a small business, you probably don’t have a large team. The good news is that you don’t need a large team behind you to attract a captive audience on Facebook. By following the nine core rules of a Facebook Page that we describe in the preceding section — and by keeping your Facebook marketing plan simple — you can grow your Page to the level you need with only a few hands on deck.

The following sections show you how to identify the people and resources you need to put your Facebook marketing plan to work.

Identifying your existing resources and manpower

First, do an internal assessment to identify your resources and manpower. For entrepreneurs and small business owners, the essential players are

• At least two Page administrators. Assign one admin the Page manager role, and the other person can be a content creator or moderator. We discuss all admin roles in more detail later in this chapter and in Book II, Chapter 3.
• A designer and a programmer to help with your branding. If you have the funds, we also suggest that you put some money toward a few sessions with a social media strategy consultant who will review your existing plan.

For larger businesses, if you have a marketing team, we suggest integrating your Facebook marketing plan into your existing marketing initiatives. Your Facebook marketing plan shouldn’t be a stand-alone Facebook marketing tool; instead, it should be closely integrated into your overall marketing plan. Sit down with your existing marketing team, and go through the six Facebook marketing goals and nine core rules of a successful Facebook Page to see how they align with the programs and initiatives you already have in place.

Deciding on in-house or outsourced marketing

After you decide to create a Facebook marketing plan, you have to decide who’s going to run it. You have multiple options to consider for your social media management and support.

Option 1: Hire an agency (or consultant) to manage your Facebook Page

Like most things, this option has both pros and cons. We offer both sides for your consideration.

Pros:

• You gain access to social media expertise and knowledge. This is especially helpful if your knowledge is limited.
• An agency or consultant can save you a tremendous amount of time. If you’re not consistently listening to your fans and interacting with them regularly, they will quickly lose interest in your Page. It might be a smart move for you to hire someone to take on this important task.
• Social media experts tend to be in the know about the latest trends. Because social media changes quickly, it’s important to stay on the cutting edge and be the first to adopt new strategies or tools as they prove to be promising. An agency or consultant can advise you on the latest and greatest in social media marketing to keep you current and ahead of the pack.
• You get expert advice on your social media content strategy. One of the most important pieces of your Facebook marketing strategy is the content you post on your social networks. An agency or consultant can help you create a content plan to align with your overall marketing plan.
• An agency or expert has access to monitoring and tracking tools and technology that you may not have. This is important, because an agency can quickly see what is working and what needs tweaking, allowing your campaign to be monitored in real time.

Cons:

• An agency won’t know your products or services as well as you do. If you’re not careful, an agency may end up representing you or your brand in ways that don’t particularly inspire confidence. Potential customers often ask questions about a product or service via a company’s Facebook Page. Ask yourself this question: If an agency or consultant were managing your Page, would that agency or consultant be able to give the prospects accurate information?

  Incorrect information could cost you a new client — or, worse, earn you backlash from your Facebook fans. One solution is to make sure that your agency or consultant has direct access to the appropriate people inside your company who can provide real-time support when needed.

• An agency won’t understand your brand as well as you do. Successful brands have a specific voice, and it’s critical that this voice be consistent throughout all your marketing initiatives. That said, it’s paramount that your agency or consultant understand your brand voice and be clear on your brand personality and positioning. This clarity allows for a seamless transition between your company’s communication style and the agency’s communication on your behalf.
• An agency won’t know your company culture intimately and will be unaware of behind-the-scenes activities. One of the most important aspects of Facebook marketing is the transparency factor. Your fans want to know your company and brand at an intimate level. That’s what makes social media networking so attractive to consumers.

  Only you and those who work with you intimately know what your company stands for and what its values are. This is difficult to explain to someone from the outside who isn’t experiencing it firsthand. An agency or consultant isn’t part of your culture and won’t be able to communicate the special benefits of that culture to your fans unless you educate that agency or consultant in advance, which takes some dedication on your part.

  Some of the most popular brands on Facebook allow their fans to get a glimpse of their company culture and what goes on behind the scenes. Zappos is a great example; see www.facebook.com/zappos.

• If you (or someone on your team) don’t manage your Facebook Page directly, you won’t see what’s happening on a day-to-day basis. This situation means you lose a little control of what’s taking place on your Page.

  One solution is to ask your agency or consultant to report to you on a regular basis, informing you about what’s taking place on your Page, and letting you know about any challenges and what was done to take care of them.

If you do decide to hire an agency or consultant, make sure that you discuss what’s expected; the procedures you want the agency or consultant to adhere to at all times; and the rules, guidelines, and any specific procedures to follow in case of a crisis on any of your social networking sites.

Option 2: Self-manage your Facebook marketing plan

Most small to midsize businesses manage their Facebook marketing plan in-house. Overall, this strategy has multiple benefits. If you’re managing your strategy in-house, you essentially eliminate all the cons discussed in the preceding section.

Option 3: Use the hybrid model

If you’re new in the social media arena (as most people are), consider hiring support to some degree.

One solution that we suggest is the hybrid model. In essence, you hire an agency or consultant to help build your social media marketing strategy (including your Facebook marketing plan), and that agency or consultant can also support the launch of the strategy in the early stages. When things are off the ground and running smoothly (which may take about six months to get going), you and your team take over. You not only benefit from the agent’s or consultant’s expertise and experience, but also work in a certain amount of training so that you and your team are well equipped to take over after the agent’s or consultant’s contract ends.

Defining Your Admin Team

Among the most important roles on your Facebook Page are the administrator and administration team. You can have just one person manage your Page and oversee the management, monitoring, and content creation, but we suggest that you assign multiple admins to help support your Facebook Page activity. The great news is that you can assign different permissions to specific admin roles, meaning that you don’t have to give full access of your Page to all your admins.

Having a few admins is a smart strategy because your admins can divide and conquer. With multiple admins, you can assign roles and responsibilities that are aligned with the admins’ skills and strengths, and your Page will be more consistently managed when multiple people watch over day-to-day activity.

Make sure to assign each admin clear tasks to prevent overlap or confusion on your Page. Create a set of rules and guidelines to make sure that everyone is clear of the Page expectations for admins.

Filling the five admin roles

The five admin roles are

• Manager has full access to your Page. A manager can manage admin roles (meaning that he can add and delete admins and assign admin roles), edit the Page, add apps, create posts, respond to and delete comments, send messages, create Ads, and view Insights.
• Content creator can edit the Page, add apps, create posts, respond to and delete comments, send messages, create Ads, and view Insights.
• Moderator can respond to and delete comments, send messages, create Ads, and view Insights.
• Advertiser can create Ads and view Insights.
• Insights Analyst can view Insights.

Because you can assign different levels of access to your Page admins, take advantage of this feature by assigning some of your Facebook tasks to different people on your team.

Adding an admin

To add an admin to your Facebook Page, you have to be an admin manager of your Page. Only admin managers can add other admins. Here’s how you do it:

1. Log in to Facebook and go to your Facebook Page.
2. Choose Manage Admin Roles from the Edit Page drop-down menu (at the top of your Facebook Page in the Admin Panel).

   You’re taken to your admin page.

   If you already have multiple admins, your current admins’ images and names pop up. You also see a field where you can enter the name or e-mail address of a person you want to add as an admin, as shown in Figure 2-12.

3. Type the name or e-mail address of each person you want to add as an admin.

   As you type the name, a drop-down menu appears, with possible choices of people you may be searching for.

   

4. Click the correct name and profile image in the drop-down menu.

   The full name populates instantly.

   Any admin of your Page must be Friends of your personal Profile or must have liked your Page. If you want to add someone who doesn’t fit either description, you can add him as an admin by typing the e-mail address he uses to log in to Facebook. When you enter the e-mail address, that person receives an e-mail from Facebook, saying that he was made an admin of your Page.

5. (Optional) Add more admins by clicking the Add Another Admin link.

   The link is above the Save button; see Figure 2-12.

6. If necessary, change the roles of your existing admins by clicking the drop-down menu below a name and choosing a new role, as shown in Figure 2-13.

   

7. Click Save.

   You’re prompted to add your Facebook password to secure the changes.

Deleting an admin

To delete an admin, follow these simple instructions:

1. Log in to Facebook and go to your Facebook Page.
2. Choose Manage Admin Roles from the Edit Page drop-down menu (at the top of your Facebook Page in the Admin Panel).

   You’re taken to your admin page. If you already have multiple admins, your current admins’ images and names pop up.

3. Click the X next to the name of the admin you want to delete.
4. Click Save.

   You’re prompted to add your Facebook password to secure the changes.

   When you remove an admin, that person is automatically removed from your admin list. She won’t receive notification that she’s been removed as an admin.

Just as you’re able to remove other admins of your Page, you can remove yourself as an admin. We don’t recommend doing this, however. If you remove yourself as an admin of your Page, you lose all access to your Page, and you can no longer act as the owner of the Page. This means that you can’t edit the Page, you can no longer post on behalf of the Page, and you can’t access the Facebook Page dashboard. Always keep yourself as an admin of your Facebook Page.

Choosing the right Page manager

The Page manager is the admin of your Page who is ultimately responsible for managing the Page and making sure that it runs smoothly. In many ways, this admin manages the other admins who you’ve assigned to the Page. Additionally, the Page manager should be well aware of your Facebook marketing plan and should execute that plan on a daily basis.

A Page manager interacts with your fans daily, so take the time to choose this person wisely. More often than not, the person you end up choosing is already on your internal team because he knows your brand and your clients better than someone from the outside does. If you do need to hire an outside source, make sure that you train that person well and monitor her activity closely.

Checking out personality traits

When looking for the right manager for your Page, you want to make sure that person’s personality is a good fit for your audience. Here are six personality traits of a superstar Page manager:

• Natural communicator
• Problem solver
• Person who enjoys people
• Good listener
• Professional
• Positive and enthusiastic

In addition to these traits, consider your ideal audience. Make sure that your Page manager will connect easily with your fans.

Searching for skills

Although personality traits are important for a Page manager, keep in mind that any successful Page manager must also possess these necessary skills:

• Solid understanding of social networking
• Social media savvy
• Strong commitment to helping people in social channels
• Ability to multitask and think quickly
• Knowledge and understanding of online marketing
• Ability to grasp how social media activity aligns with business goals

Making the final choice

To make the right decision, here are some important questions to ask before you decide who will ultimately manage your Facebook Page:

• Does this person show the ability to be social online?
• Does this person show a genuine interest in connecting with our clients?
• Can I trust this person to be professional and respectful at all times?
• Do people naturally gravitate toward this person?
• Will this person actively contribute to new ideas to grow the Page and make it better each day?

Considering a social media manager

A social media manager differs from a Facebook Page manager in that the social media manager is responsible for all social media channels, as well as the overall social media marketing strategy. In addition, a social media manager must interact regularly with your internal marketing team (if you have one).

The size of your organization, your overall budget, and your access to resources are major factors in deciding whether a social media manager is right for your business.

A social media manager must possess personality traits and skill sets similar to those of Page manager. See “Choosing the right Page manager,” earlier in this chapter, to review the necessary traits and skills.

In addition, the social media manager must know your company, brand, products, and services well, and must have a strong background in traditional marketing as well as a strong grasp of new media marketing trends.

In a nutshell, social media manager is a higher-level position than Page manager and has many more responsibilities. Whereas you may be able to add the Page manager role to an existing employee’s plate, the social media manager role is more robust and time-consuming, and requires more experience and a higher-level skill set than that of Page manager.

We suggest that you start small:

• First, identify and test a dedicated manager for your Facebook Page, and hire a social media consultant or agency for just a few months to get you up and running.
• Next, review your activity, and decide whether a social media manager would add value and growth to your overall plan.
• Finally, just as you would with a Page manager and admins of your Facebook Page, if you decide to hire a social media manager, make sure to create clear roles, responsibilities, and guidelines for this position.

Coordinating admin posts and strategies

Strive to assign clear guidelines and rules not only for your Page manager but also for your multiple admins. To keep your admins on task without duplicating efforts, give them clear direction. That way, your Page will be updated regularly, your fans will be supported, and your admins won’t be confused about their Page responsibilities.

As we mention earlier in this chapter, an editorial calendar can come in handy when coordinating posts and marketing messages. To ensure all your admins are on the same page, encourage each of them to use the same editorial calendar to track activity.

Here are some guidelines to consider as you coordinate posts and strategies:

• Decide how you want your admins to post on your Page. Here are some questions you want to ask about your status updates and posts on your Timeline:
  • How often will you post updates to your Page?
  • What will you post about?
  • Will you include links in your posts to direct fans to content outside Facebook?
  • Will you use third-party content, such as posts from your favorite blog sites and videos from YouTube, to add value?
  • Will you mix up the media, using video, audio, and photos?
• Determine a communication strategy. There’s a fine balance between controlling the conversations on your Page and allowing your fans to interact freely with each other without much policing on your part. Decide how your admins should manage this important balance. The goal is to monitor your Page so that it has no inappropriate behavior or content that could damage your reputation, but at the same time, not be too controlling (because you might stop conversations that otherwise would develop freely).
• Assign and document roles. One admin may be responsible for posting one third-party article a day, and another admin may be assigned the task of uploading company videos throughout the week. Other tasks could include posting questions, uploading company photos to a photo album, monitoring and responding to all fan posts, and posting on fan Pages to increase overall engagement. Whatever the tasks, make sure that your admins are clear on their duties so they’re not confused.
• Create internal guidelines. Every Facebook Page should have a “do’s and don’ts” list associated with it, and your internal team should use that list as a guide. Make very clear what you allow and what you won’t tolerate on your Page. Include what can and can’t be discussed, including company-related content and personal content. Decide how often you’ll promote your programs and services, and explain what acceptable promotion looks like. Think about your company, your mission, and your goals, and carefully craft your guidelines around them. The time you spend on this task will spare you a lot of headaches in the future!

Measuring Your Return on Investment

Because we’re still in the early days of social media marketing, measuring return on investment (ROI) is, in a word, tough. There’s still much debate about what you can and can’t measure because in many ways, social media is considered to be a soft marketing vehicle, meaning it’s still debatable how we should measure hard metrics like dollars earned and customers acquired.

With that in mind, think about your marketing goals and what you plan to accomplish via your new Facebook marketing plan. If you start from there, you’re sure to identify areas that you can measure to track your results.

Defining success

To define success, it’s essential to have a solid Facebook marketing plan. You have to know what success looks like before you start. For you, success may include getting people to interact and leave comments on your Facebook Page, encouraging your Facebook fans to check out your website, and/or selling your products and services on your Facebook Page. It comes down to aligning your social media metrics with the metrics your company is already comfortable with. In Book IX, we drill into the specific areas you’ll want to track and analyze to make sure that your Facebook marketing plan is working for you.

Measuring brand ROI

The best way to think about measuring brand ROI is to consider how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. It really comes down to identifying how often your fans are engaging with your Page. The number of likes you have is important, but the frequency at which your fans are responding to your questions or engaging with your posts is even more important. You want to track how many times your fans are clicking your links and responding to your posts with comments.

In addition, you want to consider how well your existing customers can identify with your brand on Facebook. Is your Facebook branding consistent with your website, products, and or services? You want to create a bridge from Facebook to your main hub, and you do this with consistent branding.

Measuring financial ROI

The best way to measure financial ROI for your Facebook marketing plan is to set benchmarks. You want to clearly document what you’re working toward in terms of sales and how you can use Facebook as part of this strategy. You also want to decide whether your goal is to sell directly from your Page or to use your Page as a channel to funnel interested prospects to a sales page after you build their trust and offer them immense value. Measuring your financial ROI comes down to your sales strategy for your Page.

If your goal is to sell your products or services from your Facebook Page, you need to identify benchmarks for this process. Look at how many people you manage to attract to your Page daily; track which tabs they click and how long they stay on your Page overall. You can do all this by using Facebook Insights and third-party monitoring tools.

In Book IX, we walk you through how to use Facebook Insights and third-party monitoring tools to help you better understand how to track your financial ROI for your Facebook marketing initiatives.