Facebook

[THtreeservices]

35 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

Sorry to be a dimwit but what is " AI assisted search" ?

Artificial intelligence, google is now using it in search. It will be very interesting to see how a machine learning processor or brain if you will decides what is relevant to the user. I suspect as always, marketing will forever be fluid and more real time than ever before and of course costly.

[Mike Hill]

I think our attitudes will change towards facebook as an advertising platform as more and more people use it.

 

Year before last I ceased our local paper advertisment after nearly a decade.I noticed many of our elderly clients,the type I thought the local paper was attractive to,owning smart phones.

 

People like facebook advertising as it can be used to contact businesses either publically or privately via message.Last year I had a problem with my website,the company seemed to ignore my Email requests for assistance.I posted a complaint on their facebook page and viola! problem fixed in an hour. 

[Steve Bullman]

Thing is the younger generation are being attracted to other social media sources other than facebook, and I expect the generation after that will be using yet another different one.  Facebook isn't the be all and end all.  Personally I think it should be used to share stuff from your own website, not using as a sole replacement for one.

[john k]

It seems that with business pages Facebook restrict the number of organic page views that you get, preferring you to pay for them by continually boosting posts. Don't assume that people will see what you post on Facebook unless you pay for it.

Facebook can be a useful tool, but I wouldn't want to rely on it too much.

[Stephen Arb Association]

We started using Facebook advertising more widely in 2017 and it's been fantastic for us so far. Obviously we're a bit different but I thought i'd share the experience as a lot of it applies.

 

I don't think it will ever replace websites but along with google and SEO work it's the best way to drive leads to your site and promote awareness of your brand.

In previous years we've had to cancel a few Training Courses due to low numbers, these days we stick it on Facebook and we're able to target within a radius of the event location people with interests, job type, fields of study. The result has been no cancellations and higher numbers of delegates with courses filling up quicker. It also worked well for Arb Show and a photo competition as well as some promotion of the ArbAC scheme.

 

If you have an idea of what your main target audience is, where they're based and what interests they might have then you can do some really productive targeted advertising, which comes with detailed analytics on age, gender, cost per click, ad relevance etc.

It definitely helps if you've got some sort of help and advice content which is useful for the customer - boost that as a post, then you'll get more followers and leads than straight up sales posts. If it's all selling or promoting the business then it puts you off.

Generally we try to post content that's of interest to arbs and some public tree interest stories, along with 1 or 2 key things going on within the organisation each week. The key is to make your page worthy of following with helpful content and stuff that customers can connect with - stories about team members maybe. 

The other positive with Facebook advertising (along with it being very cheap for what it does at the moment) is that it connects the right people with your page - our page likes have gone from 5500 in January to almost 10,000. You can work out the best time to schedule your posts so they are seen when most of your followers are online (our main times are 7-9am and 7-10pm).

Despite the reviews this Page Manager App is a fantastic tool for managing and scheduling everything: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/facebook-pages-manager/id514643583?mt=8

 

And the Advert manager is the best way for tracking your boosted posts and page promotions, i'd highly recommend both as they are intuitive and it's easy to add budget and edit your audiences. Advert manager audiences are easier to create on the desktop version though. (Both apps available on Android)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook-ads-manager/id964397083?mt=8

Also thought i'd add that Facebook are currently trialing a News Feed that only displays sponsored/promoted content in 6 countries. I personally think it's a terrible idea and would put users off - you like pages so you see their content in your news feed, but obviously they want to make more money from it. But watch out, as with all things Facebook they are often changing and updating the way it works.

Hope this helps

Steve (AA Marketing Officer)

Edited November 8, 2017 by Stephen Arb Association

[magwick]

i am currently using both and have had work through both, but i am not targeting  the general public but the trade itself.

trouble is with face book you constantly have to post stuff to keep your page relevent.