Speaker 2 00:10 Welcome to another episode of social PR secrets. My name is Lisa buyer and I'll be your host. Today's guest is Andrea Vall. Andrea is known as the Facebook queen when it comes to Facebook for business. She knows all the ins and outs of Facebook advertising as well as the organic side of Facebook. This interview originally took place when I taught my social media management class at the university of Florida and Andrea was happy to share all of her Facebook secrets with us. Enjoy.
Speaker 3 00:42 Alrighty, so we are back and now we're on week five. We're talking about Facebook for business and now we're starting to get into each one of the social media channels and I'm super excited to introduce the guests that we have, the expert guests that we have. Andrea Vall, she is the coauthor of Facebook marketing for dummies and Andrea has actually written the third edition. That just shows you how quickly Facebook changes, especially Facebook for business and Andrea, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you're a social media coach, consultants, strategists, you have all kinds of workshops and special classes going on. So give us a little bit of background on yourself and then we'll get into the questions.
Speaker 4 01:18 Yeah, yeah. Great. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me here, Lisa. Um, yeah, so I have a lot of different courses. I've written, three, three of these books are really thick fat books and they could be used as weapons, but, and it changes all the time. We all know how Facebook marketing changes all the time. Um, but the third edition came out in August, so that's great. And then I'm also, uh, uh, the instructor
[email protected] and that just got all updated here, uh, very recently as of January. And I also have a course called, uh, Facebook advertising secrets. And so lots of, lots of good stuff going on and I also have an alter ego, so I blog as an altar, my alter ego, grandma Mary, social media edutainer. So it's, I like to have a little fun while I blog.
Speaker 3 02:11 I love that. I love that. That's really cool. So the FB influence, um, just to kind of give our students a little bit more insight. So that's something that if they wanted to expand and really zero in a little bit more on Facebook beyond this course. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 02:26 Yeah, it goes really in depth. It's four modules and each module has five videos in it and we cover everything from just branding your page, how to make new connections out there, how to get more likes, how to use contests, advertise how to get leads with Facebook. It's really geared for uh, businesses and really how to use Facebook from a to Z for marketing your business. And so it really, it's a great resource and there's a Facebook group that's really active to where you can go in, ask questions about something specific or get get details on what direction you should go with something. So, okay, great. Can anybody join that group? Anyone can join. It's available all the time and you can just go to FB influence.com and check it out.
Speaker 3 03:14 Okay, great. So let's get into some of the questions this week. We're going to be exploring Facebook for business and one of the projects is, um, for the students to actually start their own Facebook page, um, as if they are, they're either for the personal brand themselves or for a company that they might be interning with or, or something like that. Right. So as a social media manager, just starting out, what are some of the important factors that need to be considered because things change so quickly. So what's, what's most important today from a Facebook, from a social media stand, social media management standpoint and Facebook? Yeah,
Speaker 4 03:48 yeah. I think it's important to have a really professional looking page. Make sure it's all really complete. Uh, fill out your about section. You can have a lot of texts in your about section. Really use that to market yourself. And there's lots of new things coming out. There's call to action buttons on your Facebook cover photo. The video area has changed. So keep up on the trends so you know what tools you can use for your page. And then also just make sure that you are visiting there regularly to update your page and check on comments, remove any spam, things like that to keep your page looking really good for people who come and check it out. Cause people do check out your Facebook page before they're going to decide to do business with you. They want to see what kind of, how you're responding to customers. Uh, what kind of things you're posting and they want to get a feel for how it is to do business with you.
Speaker 3 04:42 So in 2015, um, do you think every business needs a Facebook page?
Speaker 4 04:46 Yeah, I, you know, I think there's a lot of advantages to having a Facebook page. I think that people do want to see you in a more casual social environment rather than just your website. They want to see how you interact with other businesses, other people, your customers. Um, they want to, they, they want to be able to have a place to go and comment and ask questions of you. So I think it is, it is still important. I know that there's a lot of talk about the fact that the organic reach is going down, but I think it's still important and you really want to have a Facebook page if you're going to do something like advertise on Facebook because that's how you're going to get your advertise your ads into the newsfeed. So it's important to keep that up if you're going to want to run ads.
Speaker 3 05:33 And speaking of organic reach, just for our own definition of it, to give the students a quick definition of organic reach versus paid reach. And that's kind of evolved, you know, with Facebook over time, when we were first as businesses on Facebook, there was more opportunity. So can you kind of just go over how that's evolved and the definition of organic versus paid?
Speaker 4 05:54 Right. So, so when, when Facebook started kind of was, everyone would see everything, it's kind of, it was kind of like Twitter where you would have the opportunity to get every single post put into your newsfeed. And as Facebook has grown, Facebook created an algorithm to help, um, help restrict that so people wouldn't be completely overwhelmed and they would figure out what you interacted with more often and show you more of that. And pages, uh, then began to slowly get less of that organic reach into the newsfeed and their, their posts were restricted a little bit more. And so people would see more of their friends activity and less of the pages that they liked. So this has become kind of an issue in the fact that people that pages have now had to really focus on paying Facebook to push their posts into the newsfeed.
Speaker 4 06:51 So it's important that business owners know that when you post something on Facebook, it's not automatically going out to every single people person who likes your page. There's a little bit of an algorithm and it's important to keep, keep that interaction going so that people are liking and commenting on your posts. You have to think of ways to be more interesting and not just posting sales messages. And of course Facebook is even restricting sales messages even further. So you have to have a little bit of a paid strategy along with a good organic strategy as well to, to, to be engaging so that people can connect with you, uh, in your posts.
Speaker 3 07:31 Okay, great. And so we've seen over the past year and probably recently in the past few months, brands, large brands like Copyblogger and then some personal brands say that they're breaking up with Facebook and they've deleted their Facebook page. Um, completely. And I mean, Copyblogger caused quite a controversy because it had I think something like 35,000 page like,
Speaker 4 07:55 yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's even been others as well. There's, you know, I think it was a restaurant had a, or had a, I forgot what it was. They had a lot, they had 200,000 fans and they just totally shut it down. And that, you know, I think for those particular brands that that could be the right decision for them. They weren't going to advertise on Facebook. They didn't use Facebook that much. Their audience was more on Twitter and Google plus. And if you're not going to update and keep up your Facebook page and you're, you're just doing the bare minimum and you're not going to use it for advertising, then that could be the right decision for you. Um, it's, you know, all of these social sites, there's now that there's so many, you don't have to be on all of them. You, you need to pick and choose where you're going to put your activity.
Speaker 4 08:45 Where are you going to focus your energy? Because when you spread yourself too thin, you're not putting a good presence on any, any one site. So just focus your energies on where you enjoy being and where your audience is. Yeah, I think that's the key where your audiences, and I think Copyblogger's main point was maybe they just weren't seeing the return on investment, but I think it's not something that businesses should take as a knee jerk reaction and say, Oh, you know, Facebook has done, let's move on to the next thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely don't think it's done yet. People keep saying is Facebook does, is Facebook dead? I definitely do not think so. I think that you have to have a paid strategy now. And so that's what I think people are upset with is that there has to be some, um, some investment there.
Speaker 4 09:31 But I, I kind of liked that opportunity because now you can really target and, and be very intentional about who you're going to reach. And it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. I have a lot of clients who are doing extremely well, um, with their Facebook marketing. Some of them are spending a thousand dollars a day on Facebook ads and they're getting that return. So it's, it's a good place to be. Great point. I totally agree. And, um, you know, some brands can spend a thousand dollars a day, but it doesn't even have to be that much. I have some small businesses that I here you can spend a dollar or two a day and, and at least get something back for that. So it doesn't have to be a huge amount. Right, exactly. That's so true. Because yeah, even just a few dollars a day is still, um, still worthwhile.
Speaker 4 10:15 And I think it's one of the best places to advertise online right now. So, and can you give us some examples of maybe a Facebook page and example of how we talk about the audience and the targeting with the Facebook ads? Just one kind of basic examples of the students can get an idea of how you can target on Facebook with the right. So you got all the demographics available to you. Um, you know, gender, age, location, all of that available to you as targets. But then the other things you have available to you are things like interests where you're targeting people who like jogging or you're targeting people who like yoga or something like that. If you know what your audience is about and what kinds of things they like. Facebook is taking the interests that people have put into their personal profiles. Um, they've liked certain pages or they've even said, I like running.
Speaker 4 11:11 Then you can then reach those people. Very specifically, you can reach people who have said that they're engaged. So if your business is a wedding business, you can get those connect, put your ad right in front of those people. You can even advertise to people who have an upcoming birthday. It's really, really pretty powerful. And I think the powerful part about that is that the people that you're advertising to, because it's such a, a great match, uh, such a personalized match that they don't mind it. So if I'm engaged, I want to find out information about what might be ha, you know, what I might be able to services for engaged people or about to plan a wedding. So it's a win win. Yeah, yeah. Yup. So can you share some of the top trends in 2015 for Facebook? Yeah, one of the top trends for sure is video video is getting so much more reach and connection with, with audiences.
Speaker 4 12:03 And I don't know about your feed, but my newsfeed is filled with video, mostly cat videos, but you don't have to post a cat video. You can. Um, but video is, is really, uh, really huge. I think Facebook is really trying to compete against, uh, YouTube with some of the things that they're rolling out and introducing like with playlists and the featured videos and other things. But, um, brands are really, uh, focusing on video. You can, um, get real connected with your audience when you have a video that where they can see you and kind of feel like they're talking to you. Um, so at, that's a great strategy. And then just also focusing on some of the advertising techniques that are available. Things like retargeting where you can advertise to anyone who has visited your website. You can collect that data and now you can reconnect with them in an ad and you can actually even figure out the people who visited your website and didn't buy your product, advertise just to them.
Speaker 4 13:04 So there's a lot of cool ad techniques that are coming out, uh, for in 2015 that are available now. So I think those are kind of some of the top trends. And then just working, focusing on working on, uh, ad ads in general, making them really appealing to people. Okay, great. What are some of the mistakes that brands are making? Small brands, large brands that you see in Facebook. I think one of the mistakes is to not answer comments. Uh, I see a lot of, uh, posts that are out there, um, that just go on answered. And if someone's going to take the time to come over and ask you a question on an outlet that you have said is available to people and you're not responding, then it just leaves a bad taste in that potential clients, customer or uh, in that potential client's mouth or even a current client.
Speaker 4 13:54 Two, you want to make sure that you're having that as a customer service, uh, place and also leaving the messages button open. You know, you can have messages that go directly to pages and a lot of people forget to check those and leave those unanswered. So you want to make sure that you are responding to these kinds of incoming things, uh, on your Facebook page. And also just really not posting often enough. I, I recommend posting at least once a day. Um, you know, you can maybe post a little bit less if you're doing some advertising too because then you're still visible to people. But trying to come up with some really interesting content once a day is a, is a really good strategy to, to maintaining your visibility there. Okay, great. That's great advice. Um, and it's an important point also bringing up the whole social, um, the social customer and customer service
Speaker 3 14:51 and social media. One of the books that we're going to be reading in this semester is zombie Loyala loyalists by Shankman. He just came out with that book and talks a lot about social media and the customer and creating customer, uh, you know, very loyal customers using it. So I think that's a great point. You know, you're, we're looking at posting, but are we watching the comments and are we, do we have our customer service department involved in social media? Like to the degree that they should be?
Speaker 4 15:17 Right, right. Yeah. A lot of people feel that customer service is one of the top reasons to be on social media.
Speaker 3 15:25 Definitely. So from a personal branding standpoint, so a lot of the students, um, most, most of the audience right now that's watching this video interview their students and most of them have not experienced the business side of Facebook. So they have their personal side of Facebook. So from a personal branding standpoint, now they're going out looking for a job, even if they're not a student. If you're looking for a job, your personal Facebook profile, what, what advice would you give to that?
Speaker 4 15:54 Yeah, I would really watch things like tags, photo tags for sure. All of this stuff is very visible and employers are increasingly checking out people's social sites, especially if you're going to be in PR and you're going to be, um, a kind of a face of the company's social media. You have to have your own social media and your own personal profile and brand in line. They don't want to have this in congruence of, of, uh, crazy, crazy party animal connected with, with their brands. So watch, watch tags, watch what you're posting yourself. Um, just keep, uh, keep a close eye on that. And there's a lot of things you can do to lock down your privacy for sure. So take a look at what your, uh, your, um, public profile looks like every once in a while to make sure there's nothing strange going on there that you might've missed.
Speaker 3 16:51 Yeah. And one of the things that I, um, had suggested for the class and we're working on this project is you can have your personal Facebook profile that can be completely private and you can create a Facebook page for your personal brand. And that is where you can develop, um, you know, you can, you can develop your actual personal brand, whether if you want to go into social media for sports or for fashion or for cooking or you know, depending on what your passion is. And that's where those types of posts can be. And I think having that type of profile that is visible, yeah, it's going to be a plus. So I think there's a balance between having your personal profile completely invisible private, because then no, you can't really find out anything about that person if you're an employer versus having maybe a personal brand. A lot of my students last semester especially, they've been, it's been so drilled into them, you know, don't let anything go public on your soul, your personal social media that nothing can be found
Speaker 4 17:52 here. You want to be able to see something about your hiring, you kind of want, you kind of start to wonder, well what are they hiding? You know? So yeah, no, that's definitely good advice. And I think the sooner you start building your personal brand, the better. The more doors that's going to open. There's a lot of young people who are really standing out online with the kind of things that they're blogging about. And you can, you can just rise to the top so quickly with your blog and your brand and, and connections that you make. They're perfect. So any advice, any more advice you can give to the future of social media managers out there and, um, any other resources that you can recommend to them? Yeah, I would just say always keep learning. There's just so much to keep up on and you know, definitely follow some of the top blogs out there.
Speaker 4 18:41 Social media examiner, which is one of the blogs that I blog for is a great blog to follow for any social media advice. Um, and just connect with me. It's
[email protected] and just keep, keep tabs on what's happening because things do change quickly and there's so much information just you available to you at your fingertips. So it's easy to keep, keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on. Definitely. Okay. Well Andrea, I really appreciate you being our guest today and again, follow Andrea Vall on Twitter and you can also join her group on Facebook. I'm part of the group, uh, FB influence and I love being part of it. That's where I find out all the ins and outs and trends of what's happening. So Andrea, thank you so much. Thank you, Lisa. Great to be here.
Speaker 2 19:37 Thank you for listening to this episode of social PR secrets. If you like what you heard, check out the book on Amazon or follow our
[email protected] this episode was sponsored by the buyer group, a social PR agency, striving to keep our balance in the digital world, practicing public relations, social media, and search marketing while occasionally drinking a glass of wine or two for the best creativity and results. Thank you all for tuning in. If you would like to get a free chapter of social PR secrets, go to social PR secrets.com/free.
