Do you need to change your Facebook Page name?  Have you been having trouble finding the how you go about changing your Facebook Page name or URL?

Well have no fear, I’ll show you how to exactly how to get this accomplished (even if it looks like you can’t get it done).

First there are two places that you can “name” your Page.  One is the name that appears on your Timeline and that shows up next to every post in the News Feed.

Changing Your Page Name

You may have chosen a name without realizing how this was going to appear.  If your Page is new or if you have less than 200 Likes, you can easily edit your Page name by accessing your Basic Information in your Page Dashboard.

Then you go to your Basic Info and you can easily Edit your name.

But if you are re-branding or you just want to tweak your Page name and you have more than 200 Likes you may have the opportunity to make a change 1 time.  I say “may” because this option sometimes doesn’t appear even if you haven’t changed your Page name at some point in the past.

You may see a Request Change link next to your Name as shown here.

If you don’t see that Request Change link, you are going to have to go to Facebook Help.  Facebook Help is sometimes very difficult to get any response from.  It will be easier to get your name changed if you have a re-brand with a photo of your website or logo to show your rebranding information.

I recommend submitting your request in two places.  The first one is the Help form for Pages here:  https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/164405897002583

I find having a screenshot helps to show your new branding so that Facebook can see that you have made a change.

The second place I recommend submitting a request is to Facebook Ads Help.  Hopefully you are using Facebook Ads from time to time to build your Page and you probably don’t want to advertise your Page if the branding isn’t congruent with your website.

The Ads area seems to be a little more responsive to changes when you tell them that you can’t spend any more money with them until your Facebook  Page name is changed (only do this if you are planning on running an ad campaign).  Submit your request here:  https://www.facebook.com/help/contact?id=615344471812117

We did this when we changed our Page www.facebook.com/TheBestKeynoteSpeakers and it took about a week to get it done.  But you may need to submit your request a couple of times if you don’t hear back after a week or so.  Hope those suggestions help!  (Please note, I cannot help with Page Name Changes – you must go through Facebook to get your Page name changed)

Changing Your Page URL or Website Address

The other thing you can change (but it sometimes is challenging) is your Facebook Page URL.  Your URL is the easy and short web address (like www.facebook.com/GrandmaMaryShow).

If you haven’t set your Username yet, go do that right now – it makes it much easier to tell people about your Page.  But BE CAREFUL – this is more difficult to get changed.  Once you set it, the URL is taken and can’t be “released” even if you delete the Page.

It can’t have any spaces between the letter and I don’t recommend putting things like periods or underscores between the words.  Then when you set it, capitalize the first letter of each word.  Even if someone types in the URL without the capital letters it will still go to the right place.

If you have already set your URL and need to rebrand, you can sometimes request a one-time change as shown  before.

If you don’t have this capability, you will have to go through the same process as outline above with Facebook Help.  I think the URL is as big a deal as making sure your you branding is consistent in your Facebook Page name.  But if your name has changed drastically, then you should get that corrected.

Have you had to change your Page name in the past?  How has it gone for you?  Let me know in the comments (remember I can’t help with actual Facebook Changes, you will need to go to Facebook directly for that.

Could you use a little Facebook automation in your life? Well, help is here.

Facebook allows you to schedule your page posts.

Many people cheered this feature because Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and other quirks make using third-party tools like HootSuite or SocialOomph for scheduling your posts less desirable than posting manually.

Let’s dig a little deeper and find out some of the nuances of using Facebook scheduled posts.

First, we will give you the steps to schedule your posts and edit them.

#1: How to Schedule Your Posts

Scheduling is easy—just follow these steps:

• Write your post as you normally would. You can attach photos, add links, add YouTube videos, add tags to other pages and events or just include regular text.
  

• In the lower-left corner of your post, click on the clock symbol as shown in the screenshot above. You can now add the year, month, day and time you want the post to go out.
  

Notice that you can also backdate your posts to supplement your Timeline if you wish (more on that later).

You can schedule your post up to 6 months in the future (more months are shown, but if you select more than 6 months out, Facebook won’t accept it). You can schedule the minutes at 00-, 10-, 20-, 30-, 40- or 50-minute marks of the hour. So if you need a post to go out specifically at 2:15 pm, you cannot set it.

• You can also add language and location targeting in your scheduled posts, just like you can in your regular posts. Just click on the Public icon and make the necessary adjustments.

• Once you have everything set, just click the blue Schedule button. Voilà! Now just remember to circle back to your posts later after the scheduled time to watch for follow-up comments!

#2: How to Find and Edit Your Scheduled Posts

To see what you have scheduled and make any changes, just go to your activity log by accessing the admin panel at the top of your page (if you don’t see the admin panel, click the red admin panel button in the upper-right corner), then click Edit Page, and Activity Log. You then see all of your scheduled posts.


If you need to edit your scheduled post, the only thing you can change from here is the time, unfortunately. To edit the text, you must cancel the post and redo your scheduling. To cancel or change the time, mouse over the upper-right corner of the post in the activity log.

#3: You Can’t Schedule Everything

You can schedule links, photos, status updates and videos (although I found scheduling a video to be a bit buggy). You can also schedule a YouTube video link, which will attach as it normally does in your posts.

You can’t schedule some of the other types of posts as you can normally do from the publisher, such as photo albums, posting of events, questions, offers and milestones.

#4: You Can Backdate Your Posts

You can schedule things in the past. I’m not sure why you would want to use the backdating feature other than to fill out your Timeline a bit. But if you have a significant event that you want to post about in the past, I recommend a milestone post instead.

The interesting thing about backdating is that the post does go out into people’s news feed immediately and then is shown at the appropriate place on your Timeline.

#5: Scheduled Posts Won’t be Automatically Tweeted

If you have linked your Twitter account to your Facebook page by setting up www.Facebook.com/Twitter so that everything you post on Facebook gets tweeted (yes, we know that it’s not always a great idea but sometimes it isn’t terrible), be aware that your scheduled posts won’t go out to Twitter.

So if you rely on your Facebook page to supplement your tweets and you move to more scheduled posts, you will have to schedule your tweets with a different tool.

#6: Scheduling Posts Can Bring about More Engagement

What can you expect when you schedule posts? It depends on your baseline right now with your Facebook page—how often you are posting, how engaged your audience is, what you are posting and other factors.

One thing that scheduling can do for you is allow you to post more regularly and increase your posting without spending all day on your Facebook page.

Randi Thompson of How to Market Your Horse Business (and an active member of our Social Networking Clubs) tried an experiment where she upped the number of posts by using scheduled posts on two of her pages.

On her How to Market Your Horse Business page, she went from posting 3 times a day to posting every 3 hours and 5 times a day. Then she had another page, Horse and Rider Awareness, where she was not posting regularly at all. She tried scheduling 3 quality posts per day. Here are her results over a 5-day period.

Now of course this is not a comprehensive study. And this could be done without scheduling posts. But the point is that scheduled posts can make things easier for you so you can batch your work, know that things are being posted at the times you want and you can get on with other parts of your business. I encourage you to try some experiments with scheduled posts on your page and see how things work for you.

And again, make sure you circle back to these posts to follow up on comments!

#7: Scheduled Posts are not Identified or “Punished” in Facebook

When you post from a different scheduling tool such as HootSuite or BufferApp, people can see that you’re posting through a different tool. But Facebook’s scheduled posts are seamless.

Using a different tool to post to Facebook is not all bad. Sometimes it’s much better to save yourself a little time and get the post out with the tool you’re using rather than not post at all.

But Facebook has been known to show posts using third-party tools a little less in the news feed or collapse them. As of this writing, I believe third-party tools are faring well in Facebook. But we all know how Facebook changes.

#8: Scheduled Posts May be Coming to Personal Profiles

The option does appear to schedule a Facebook post on personal profiles, which may be a good thing for people who are using their personal profiles to talk about business. But as of this writing, I could not schedule anything into the future, only for today or in the past.

Not everyone will see big changes by scheduling posts. You still have to deliver engaging Facebook content. But what scheduled posts can do is free up some of your time by allowing you to batch your social media posts into blocks and give you more time to focus on your business.

What are your thoughts? Have you been using scheduled posts? What results have you seen? Tell us in the comments section below!

Note: This post originally appeared on Social Media Examiner and is reposted with permission.

I’ve always loved rule #12 and try to push myself as much as possible.  But it doesn’t mean setting yourself up for failure, it means taking risks.

You know where you are playing safe and it’s time to bite off more than you think you can chew.  It’s a little scary but you have to push past those scary boundaries that you are setting for yourself!  Get out there and do it!  I know you can.

Well that is going to change.  I am committing to my own content calendar starting today.

Take a look at my video to hear my apology and hear what I need from you.  Grandma Mary keeps cutting in so be prepared.

Here is my Editorial Calendar on what I’m going to be posting each week:

• Motivation Monday – a little pep talk from Grandma or some inspiration to get you started every week.  Take a look at Grandma’s other Pep Talks to get the idea.
• Technology Tuesday – an in-depth look at a social media tip or technique to help your business.
• Fun Friday – either an interview, a quick social media tip, or something else that I might be featuring like a new product or event.

But I need your help.  I want to hear about the topics you most need help with in the comments below.  I want to make sure I’m covering what you need.  It can be as specific or as broad as you want.

I have a ton of ideas on what I’m going to be covering but I want to make sure that what I blog about is beneficial to you!  Let me know in the comments below!  And don’t worry – Grandma won’t be singing any more karaoke.

Frankly I get a little peeved at all the self-righteous do-gooders who tell you that you are doing it “wrong”.   But I definitely know that there are some no-no’s on Facebook.  While there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach, there are some good tactics you can use to improve your strategy.

Make sure you aren’t making these mistakes with your Facebook marketing.  You probably won’t die, but your business could suffer – even worse!  :)

1.  Not posting enough

Not posting enough is the deadly sin I see most often. I see Pages that haven’t been updated in months and sometimes years.  Goodness gracious, if you are going to provide a link to your Facebook Page from your website, make sure that Page is active.  If you have decided that Facebook Marketing isn’t working for your business, just take your Page down.

I recommend posting at least once per day.  Some niches and Pages can do better by posting more often – the sweet spot is often somewhere between 2-5 times per day.  Batch your work by scheduling some of your posts out ahead of time.  I have a great product called the Social Media Success Planning Kit (shameless plug) that can help you create your Editorial and Activity Calendar to help you save time.

2.  Not posting enough helpful content.

Your Page is not there for continually blasting out your marketing messages.  Think of the radio stations you might listen to (ok, used to listen to – who listens to radio anymore?) – would you listen to a station that was all ads?  No!  You’d change the channel and never come back.  Your posts should be 20% marketing messages max (I prefer 10%) and 80% education, helpful tips, and fun.

Sometimes it’s hard to find good content.  I have a blog post that can help:  How to Find the Best Content to Share on Social Media.

3.  Not following Facebook’s rules.

Facebook isn’t policing Pages that tightly.  We’ve all seen rule-breakers from the businesses who have set themselves up as a personal profile (think “JoesCoffee Shop wants to friend you” – no no no) to the Page who is violating the Cover photo rules (which have recently changed, see #6 of this post that will help you set up your Facebook Page the right way).

But just because everyone else is doing it and getting away with it doesn’t mean that you should.  If everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge would you do it too?  No.  Familiarize yourself with Facebook’s rules and keep updated on the changes.  You could be in danger of having your Page shut down and Facebook does it without warning.

Especially watch the contest rules because those are often ignored and will put your Page at risk if you ignore them.  Read this post to get the whole scoop:  3 Tips to Help You Run a Facebook Contest the Right Way.

4.  Closing your Page to comments.

Remember that it’s called “social” media.  Let people talk to you!  Don’t close your page to comments because you are worried about “negative” comments.  Most pages do not get negative comments and if you do, consider it valuable feedback and use it as an opportunity to show that you are listening.

Some industries such as healthcare or financial industries may need to close the page to comments to take regulations into consideration.  If that is the case, mention that in your About Page so people know your reasoning.

5.  Deleting Negative comments.

Do not delete negative comments.  Don’t.  Unless you have a troll.  A troll is someone who attacks you (or the members of your community) and does not respond to attempts to take the situation offline.  Oooo I don’t like those nasties.  This doesn’t mean that the person cannot express their opinion, but if they continually attack you, you can delete and ban them.

Have a written policy on your Page to help you and your community understand how to behave on your Page.  Even though Facebook is an open site, your Page is your sandbox and you make the rules there.  On the Social Media Examiner Page, the rules are written on the About Page.

6.  Not responding to posts.

This is almost as bad as not posting in months.  If someone takes the time to ask a question or post a comment on your Facebook Page, respond!  If someone came to your store and asked a question, you wouldn’t just stare at them.  You would respond or acknowledge them in some way.  If it’s spam, delete it.

7.  Not getting your Fans onto your E-mail list.

This is not a deadly sin.  But this will improve your Facebook marketing dramatically.  You need to tie your Fans into your e-mail list so you can connect with them both on e-mail and on Facebook.  Facebook could go away tomorrow and you would still have the ties to all of your Fans.  Your e-mail list is yours.  But how can you use Facebook to get people onto your list?  Here are some ways:

• Have a special tab with a free report or white paper that you offer your fans.  See my Facebook freebie tab.
• Occasionally post a link to your special freebie landing page and invite people to get it.
• Have a fantastic webinar and post about it on Facebook.  I even have a page where people can listen to some of the best of Andrea’s webinars (I pop in occasionally).  Then I post this link from time to time.
• Run a Facebook contest and let people know when they enter they will be added to your e-mail list.

So there you have it!  Don’t make these Facebook mistakes on your page.  What do you think?  Are there more mistakes that I missed?  Some on this list that shouldn’t be here?  Let Grandma know in the comments below.

And don’t worry too much if you’ve made some of these mistakes – we are all getting better.  We are getting older and wiser, right?  Love ya!

Do your subscribers use Facebook?

If so, you can gain powerful insights and target Facebook Ads to your subscription base.

You do this using the Facebook Power Editor and Custom Audiences.

In the marketing strategy outlined below, you’ll learn more about the customers on your email list and you’ll be able to better tailor your Facebook marketing to your customers.

How It Works

If you’re an experienced Facebook Ads user, this is a great way to take your Facebook advertising to the next level. (Think Facebook Ninja trick)

If you’re just getting started with Facebook advertising or if your email list is fewer than 500 people, you may want to focus first on some of the other Facebook advertising strategies.

Facebook introduced the Custom Audiences feature to use email addresses or phone numbers to match the target audience, instead of the traditional Facebook ad targeting features such as demographics and interests.

After using this email address or phone number filter, you can also use the other targeting options to niche your campaign down to a special segment of your email subscriber list—such as your customers in Tennessee or your email subscribers between the ages of 35 and 45.

You can have as many custom audiences as you like, so you can upload multiple lists of emails and phone numbers if you have your email list segmented.

One thing to point out with this strategy is that you’ll be using the emails that people used to sign up for your email newsletter—which may or may not be the same email address that people use to sign into Facebook. Or the people on your newsletter list may not even be on Facebook at all (incredible, I know). So you will not get a perfect match of data.

And just in case you’re worried about the privacy of Facebook’s Power Editor, they do not store these email addresses. In fact, they are uploaded as a hashed file (a file converted to numerical strings) just to compare to the emails of Facebook users.

Now, if you’re ready to dive into the Facebook Power Editor to use this powerful technique, just follow these 5 easy steps.

#1: Install the Facebook Power Editor

The Power Editor is a tool you can use to upload a large number of ads in bulk to your Facebook ad campaigns. If you are doing a large amount of split testing, this can be very helpful. Some people write hundreds of ads to test within a few campaigns to find out which one performs best.

If you haven’t installed the Facebook Power Editor, you’ll need to do that first. The Facebook Power Editor is a Google Chrome plugin, so you can only access the Power Editor when you’re browsing with Google Chrome.

If you haven’t downloaded Google Chrome yet, you can install it here. While using Google Chrome, follow these steps:

1. Log into your Facebook personal profile.
2. Click the wheel icon in the upper-right corner and select Manage Ads. You will see all of your Facebook ad campaigns.
3. Click Power Editor on the left sidebar.
   
4. If you haven’t installed the Power Editor before, you will see some information about the Power Editor and how you can install it.
   
5. Click the “here” link highlighted in Step 2 since you are already using Google Chrome.
6. Click the Add button to add the Power Editor shown in the popup box.
7. After installing it, you can now click the Power Editor button to open the Power Editor.
8. Download your ad campaigns into the Power Editor by clicking the Download button. You don’t have to do this, but it helps if you are going to use the Power Editor to create new campaigns in the future and you want to reference previous campaigns.
   

Download your ad campaigns into the Power Editor.

Now you have the Power Editor enabled and active.

#2: Download the Emails of Your Newsletter Subscribers

Next, you need to download the emails of your newsletter subscribers into a single column Excel spreadsheet or .CSV file. If you are using AWeber, Constant Contact,MailChimp or some other email program, you can do this very easily. You may need to strip out any additional data from the file.

Remember, you can create as many custom audiences as you want, so if you do have your email list segmented, you should maintain those segments. Hopefully you have a list of your actual customers segmented out from your general newsletter list, so you can upload that file separately.

#3: Create Your Custom Audiences

Go back into the Facebook Power Editor and upload your .CSV file. To get to the Custom Audience upload area, click on the Audiences label in the upper row, then select Custom Audience from the Create Audience drop-down menu as shown.

You will see a popup box that prompts you to abide by the Terms and Conditions outlined. The terms require that you are using your own email subscriber list (or that you have all rights and permissions to use the data from the subscribers) and that the list consists only of people who have opted into your email list (and have not since opted out). Select the Agree button and another popup box will ask you to select your file to create your audience.

Select the file you created in Step 2 with your newsletter subscribers. In the Audience Name field, select a meaningful name so that you know which subscribers are matched to this list.

You have now uploaded the file. It may take up to an hour for Facebook to process the file.

#4: Analyze Your Custom Audiences and Create Facebook Ads

Once you get your first custom audience uploaded, you will see the number of people who matched an email address on Facebook in your Power Editor.

You can create ads directly in the Power Editor, but I’ve found the interface difficult to work with and it can be glitchy. It takes some adjustments if you are used to reading your ads in the Facebook Ads interface. You can read more about it in Facebook’s guide here.

But a great benefit of uploading your email list as a custom audience is that you can now also access your custom audience in the Facebook Advertising interface. This is a great way to advertise to this list directly or to do a little analysis on this list.

To return to the Facebook Advertising interface, go to your Facebook profile, select the wheel in the upper-right corner and select Create an Ad. Now select your Page or any website you may want to advertise (it really doesn’t matter too much to see some of the analysis).

Then when you get to the “Choose Your Audience” section, you will see a new check box under the Broad Categories where you can select your custom audience. Select that check box and then you can do some analysis on your email list demographics.

#5: Gain Insight About Your List

Even if you don’t use this data for Facebook Ads, you can use it to gain insights about your list. If your list isn’t very large, targeting an ad to 200 people may not be an effective use of your Facebook marketing budget—but it isn’t too expensive to try it and see what results you get!

What you can do is find out more about their interests and demographics listed on Facebook by playing around with the Facebook Ad settings. For example, if you look at this particular list of emails I uploaded, you can find out a few things about them.

Notice that the default location setting for me is United States, so I see that the number of people this potential ad would be targeting is 560.

The entire Custom Audience loaded in the Power Editor was 714 Facebook users (refer to the previous figure), so I immediately know that 154 people on this list live outside the U.S. I can also start adding other filters to the ad targeting and find out that 340 people on this list are women who live in the U.S.

You may start trying different precise interests to find out what keywords resonate with your current audience and use those keywords in future ad campaigns.

You can also create an ad specifically targeting a segment of your list of email subscribers and use appropriate copy in the ad to appeal to them.

One other thing you can do is find out how many of your current email subscribers are not fans of yours on Facebook and perhaps target an ad directly to them. Pretty powerful!

So now you’re able to find out more about your current email subscribers and reach them specifically on Facebook with a few easy steps.

Even if your email list is not large, it is beneficial to know more about your subscribers and this technique gives you another way to reach them on Facebook.

How about you? Have you experimented with the Facebook Power Editor? What results have you seen? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Note: This post originally appeared on Social Media Examiner and is reposted with permission.

One of the big reasons I enjoyed it so much was because I got to meet many of the people I had connected with on the Social Media Examiner Facebook Page, in the Networking Clubs, and on their other social sites.  Awesome!

But it wasn’t just that.  Mike Stelzner had a vision for a conference that was a “Disney” experience and he achieved just that.  For those of you who have been to Disney, you know what I mean.  For those that haven’t, just go to Disney.  Right now.  It’s seriously good.

Here are the main reasons I thought Social Media Marketing World achieved conference excellence:

1.  A Real Focus on Networking

Networking is the main reason I go to conferences.  Meeting people in person is priceless.  But SMMW took it to a new level by having a Networking Ambassador.  Mike Ambassador Bruny did a stellar job of facilitating connections with Networking Bingo on the first night.  They gave away great prizes like a $500 Apple gift card, a $500 Southwest Airlines gift card, and a free ticket to next year’s event.

They had morning networking walks and a networking run (which was a little more challenging to talk during).  By putting a focus on Networking from the beginning of the event, everyone was more open and welcoming.  There was a real camaraderie.

So many amazing people were there.  I personally got to meet a lot of people I’ve wanted to meet for a long time.

2.  Great Content

The heart of any conference is the content.  I thought the keynotes were excellent and a great balance of covering what we wanted to know about social media and what we wanted to know to help us run our business.

• Mike Stelzner gave us a glimpse of what is to come in social media for 2013.
• Larry Benet told us how to make lasting connections in our networking.
• Sally Hogshead showed us how to be fascinating and how to use our own natural fascination formula.
• Jay Baer, Mario Sundar, Mark Schaefer, and Chris Brogan helped answer the question “Are we wasting our time with social media?”  (The answer was no, but we have to focus…..squirrel!)
• Dave Kerpen told us why it pays to be Likeable (see the resources below)

The sessions were amazing too.  I have to link to some other great posts that do some of the sessions better justice:

• Socially Sorted Top Tweets Day 1
• Socially Sorted Top Tweets Day 2
• Top Rank Social Media Marketing World Wrap-up
• Mike Gingerich’s Social Media Marketing World Review

 3.  Fun

Social Media Marketing World was billed as a mini-vacation.  I hadn’t been to San Diego in years and I know that was a big part of the draw for many people.  The networking event the opening night was in the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park.  I would not have gotten to that part of San Diego if it weren’t for that event and it was fun to see.

They had a photo booth set up for people to get a little crazy.  Phil Mershon’s band entertained us with some awesome jazz.  

The second night was also fun-filled as we boarded the Networking Cruise and went out into the harbor on a giant yacht (although I don’t think Derek Halpern would agree as he didn’t seem to have his sea legs).  They had a dessert bar (my fav), Karaoke (some good and some not so good), and more networking.

Fun was also sprinkled throughout the event.  Brian Carter had a really funny “opening act” before Sally Hogshead’s keynote where he delivered the funny side of social media, Power Points, and pie charts.

Rebecca Corliss told us about some of her “Least Favorite Things” on social media

4.  Attention to Detail

I mentioned the Disney experience earlier and that includes the attention to detail.  The signage was good, and the event planning staff of Right Hand Events was incredible.  They had packets of information for each role.  I was an Airport Greeter for 4 hours on Sunday.  I got trained to be an Airport Greeter by them (I’m not going to quit my day-job, that was hard work)  We held up signs welcoming people in the airport and helping direct them to the limos (with discount coupons given by Uber) or other transportation.

On the way to the Networking Cruise, we had about a 10 minute walk from the hotel to the boat.  They had staff about every 400 yards directing us on our way even though it was a straight shot.  It may have benefited more people on the way home after the booze-cruise.

I had many people tell me that they never had to “wonder” where to go.  There were always plenty of staff out between sessions helping to direct traffic.  And I have to give a huge shout-out to Phil Mershon, Social Media Examiner’s Director of Events for working so hard to make this all happen as well as Mike Stelzner of course, Irene O’Leary, Cindy King, Emily Crume, and all the other staff and volunteers who helped make this incredible!

Thanks and I’m looking forward to next year!

Resources from the event

Dave Kerpen gave us access to his slides from his keynote

Very fun visual note-taking from Anne McColl:

Curation of photos from the event:  https://socialchomp.com/stream/270

Other great posts about the event:

• 60 Second Marketer
• Kim Garst’s Top Takeaways

How about you?  Did you attend Social Media Marketing World?  What did you think?  Or have you also been to a great event?  What made it great?  Share your thought with me in the comments!

This article will show you four ways to enhance your Facebook Ads.

What Changed Within Facebook Ads?

If you’ve been running Facebook Ads over the past year, you may be confused by some of the newer options and the new layout of the Ads area. You may have felt like you had a good handle on everything if you read this post in Social Media Examiner about Facebook Ads.

But of course, this is Facebook, and the only constant with Facebook is change. Let’s dive into some of the changes with the Facebook Ads platform so that you can maximize your next Facebook Ad campaign.

The first step is to choose what you want to advertise. You can choose an external URL or a Facebook Page, App or Event. This step has not changed much from the previous iterations of the Facebook Ads interface.

You’ll notice your first difference if you choose to advertise your Facebook Page, Event or App.

#1: You Have New Choices

One big change with the new Facebook Ads layout is the choice of objectives.

The changes are as follows.

• Get More Page Likes. With this selection, you’re advertising your Page and trying to grow your Likes. You can write your own ad copy and you can craft your own title of your ad.  The title defaults to the title of your Facebook Page, but you can change this.
• Promote Page Posts. This option was previously under the “Sponsored Story” section of Facebook Ads. This is a way to advertise one of your recent posts and the ad is pre-written for you. This type of ad still appears on the right side of Facebook Ads, as shown in the preview, and it appears in the News Feed where people can interact with the post itself right from the ad. A word of caution on this type of ad: You will get charged for a click if someone likes the post that you’re advertising. They don’t have to like your Page to like the post and they may even think that they are liking your Page by liking the post. So make sure you’re using this option wisely. But one thing I like about the Promote Page Posts selection is that you can select a post that had a photo and get a “bonus” photo in your ad.
  

Be aware of the new 20% maximum text rules in Facebook Ads.  Make sure any photo you attach to a status update will need to comply with these rules (note that this one would not be approved for advertising!)

• See Advanced Options. Selecting this option allows you to have more flexibility in the bidding on your ad. If you select this option, you still have the same options of choosing to advertise your Page or a page post, and you will have to make those selections initially. The main difference here is in how you want to bid for your ad.
  

• Only the Bidding options change with the See Advanced Options selection.

Also note that when you choose to advertise your Facebook Page, you can change the landing view so that when users click on your ad to see more information, you can direct them to a particular tab on your Page.

#2: Sponsored Stories Are Automatically Selected When Advertising Your Facebook Page, Event or App

Be very cautious about this next step, because it is one of the major changes with Facebook Ads.

Facebook auto-selects the Sponsored Stories choice for any ad that advertises something on Facebook, such as a Page, an Event or an App. Facebook says, “No increase in budget is required.” But that is a little misleading.

What that statement means is if you are spending $10/day on your ad, then Facebook will also run your Sponsored Story within that $10/day budget, but will still charge you when someone clicks on that Sponsored Story.

So now you may have $5/day going toward the Sponsored Story and $5/day going to the ad you intended and that has the copy you want.

Now this may not be a bad thing if you’re truly looking to increase your likes. Remember that Sponsored Stories are the ones that go into the News Feed (and they are shown on the right side also), where more people notice them.

The Facebook Ad I ran recently that included the Sponsored Story Ad performed very well. When you look at the data, the Sponsored Story looks like it had a 100% conversion rate (Actions to Clicks), versus the Facebook Ad that had an 80% conversion rate of Actions to Clicks.

But make sure you dig a little deeper into these numbers. When you expand each of these ads (notice how each of the ads has a different line item in your reports), you see more information.

You find that while the Actions were high on the Sponsored Story, they didn’t all result in an actual Page like. Some users just liked the post, some commented on it and some shared it.

In this case, the Ad conversion now becomes 80% for the Sponsored Story and 77% conversion for the regular ad (74 likes from 96 clicks). The Sponsored Story still outperformed the ad in this case, but make sure you watch your numbers!

And do your own testing on Facebook Ads—you may find that your Page and your ads perform differently. Remember you can deselect the Sponsored Story if you do not want to create a Sponsored Story with your ad.

#3: Click See Advanced Options to Only Advertise a Sponsored Story

Another change with the new layout is that it’s more challenging to advertise just a Sponsored Story about people Liking your Page. To do so, click See Advanced Options, then Remove the Ad itself to leave just the Sponsored Story behind.

#4: Know Your Bidding Options

Bidding has not changed that much, but it is definitely something you should understand. When you choose to advertise something you have on Facebook such as your Page, Event or App, and you select the first radio button (Get More Likes, Increase Attendance, or Get New Users, respectively), then Facebook does your bidding for you. They optimize your ad with the CPM (cost per mille, which is cost per 1000 impressions) model.

You can switch to the Advanced Pricing either here in the Campaign and Budget window or by choosing to See Advanced Options as mentioned in #1. If you choose the Advanced Pricing option, you can then use the CPC (cost per click) model, as well as set your own bids for the CPM model.

Hopefully these tips have helped you stay on top of some of the changes in Facebook Ads and maybe even given you some new ideas on how you can leverage Facebook Ads.

How about you? What have you found to be working with your Facebook Ad campaigns? How frequently are you using Facebook Ads? Share your experience in the comments section below.

Note: This post originally appeared on Social Media Examiner and is reposted with permission.

A while back (sorry Karl for taking so long to get this posted) Karl sat down with me and gave me feedback on how I can improve my speaker landing page.

Karl gave me the video replay of the call, and I took some notes about his great points below.

Here are my takeaways from our conversation and maybe they can help you as well when you are designing your Speaker Page:

#1  Open with a powerful headline

Having a powerful headline is a good idea for any page you want to engage people on.  This is where you grab people.  Any sales page, advertisement, or even blog post performs better with a good headline.  Karl suggested a question that an event planner might have on their mind.  Something like “Do you need your audience to really understand social media?”  I tweaked it a bit and may even tweak it more as I do some more testing.

#2  Remove distractions

Again, another great tip for any sales page.  You don’t want people getting distracted with extra things in a sidebar or clicking on a link that will take them away from your sales page.  You want them to read your copy.  Luckily, I have a theme that will easily allow me to remove the sidebars on any page on my website.  If you don’t have that, you may want to consider a plugin like Premise to help you remove any distractions.

#3  Tell the story

Tell people what their life will be like after they hire you.  What will people be saying about you as a speaker?  How will hiring you to give a speech reflect on them?  They want to make sure you are a grand slam so this is not a time to be shy.  I’m always a little reluctant to toot my own horn but now is the time.  Focus on the benefits you will deliver and the results of the speech.

#4  Give social proof

Testimonials are critical.  Highlight them, accentuate them, and sprinkle them around like candy.  I added break out boxes so the testimonials were more visible, and I added Twitter testimonials from webinars and talks I had done in the past.

#5  Make it readable

Don’t make the reader work to get through your sales page.  Have things in order and condense your topics to make them easy to read and understand. Don’t switch back and forth between talking about yourself in the 3rd person and in the 1st person.  Consider having your bio and headshot on another page because this page is designed to sell your services, not be a resource for those who have already booked you for an event.

#6  Have a good speaker’s video (aka speaker’s reel)

I updated mine to be more succinct and more professional.  If you can have shots of the audience laughing and clapping that is ideal.  Plan to have a videographer at a few of your speaking events to get good footage.  Also make sure it’s not too long – three to five minutes is ideal.

Here is my page before the changes:

And here is my page after the changes:

Or you can see the whole thing for yourself at www.andreavahl.com/speaking

This is still a work in progress but I think there have been great improvements.  Thanks so much to Karl Staib for the review!  Make sure you read Karl’s post for more information on improving sales pages:   How to Avoid the 3 Biggest Sales Page Mistakes.

What do you think?  Better?  Any other tips for me?  What has this inspired you to change on your own site?  Let me know in the comments!

Would you like to find reliable sources of content your fans and followers love?

This article contains eight tips to help you quickly find great content.

Why Share Other People’s Content?

It’s all about becoming a valuable resource.  When you can dig up great articles your audience is interested in–regardless of the source–you’ll become more respected and your content will be widely shared.

And when you have some of your own content to share, people will be more likely to help spread the word.

Here’s where to find valuable content:

#1: Watch Large News Sites

Depending on your industry, you may find topical and interesting articles on large news sites such as USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If you have a news site or magazine for your niche that provides industry news, make sure you have that bookmarked as part of your content.

The Huffington Post has a lot of different categories to draw your content from.

#2: Watch News Aggregators

If you want to make content sourcing a little easier, use a news aggregator website or tool. Certain sites do a great job of bringing in the latest news and sorting it by industry or niche all in one place.

Stuff To Tweet has some of the most popular posts on different sites including CNN, YouTube and more. Yes, it does mention tweeting, but these articles are good for Facebook, too.

Popurls is another similar site that has a few more sites listed. You can alsocustomize the results if you sign up for an account.

Alltop is another news aggregator where you can customize your results. The topics are organized by topic alphabetically and by site.

Inbound also uses categories to help organize their content. They tend to be more online-related topics.

If you like receiving an email with aggregated news, SmartBrief may be a good fit for you. They include a variety of industries and send you an email with the popular news.

#3: Pay Attention to Popular Posts

You can also see things that are trending and popular on some of the other social media sites and share them to Facebook.

LinkedIn today has some great features such as Trending in Your Network, which is a natural filter if you are connected to a lot of people in your niche.

You can also see what’s trending on Twitter even if you don’t have a Twitter account. Just go to any Twitter account (such as www.twitter.com/smexaminer) andlook on the left side to see the hot topics.

Notice that you can switch the trends by clicking the Change link and selecting a certain region to get more localized results. Are these trending topics always the best things to share on Facebook? Maybe not, but they can be relevant.

You may be better off just using Twitter Search and plug in some of your niche keywords to find some good articles to share on Facebook.

#4: Have Go-to Sources to Share

Many times you know which other Facebook Pages consistently have good content and valuable posts. They may be in your industry or they may be a complement to your business so your audience will also be interested in their content.

There are a few different ways to watch their Facebook posts. One is to like their Page as your Page and then watch your Page news feed. This makes it easy toshare their posts when you see them in your news feed.

Another way to easily monitor other Pages is to create an Interest List of all of the Pages on your personal profile and periodically monitor that feed.

You can make this Interest List public so other people can follow it, or you can make it private so only you know who is on it.

Mari Smith made a public list of Facebook Experts and it’s followed by almost 30,000 people!

When you have the Interest List on your personal profile, sharing it to your Facebook Page is not hard. Just select the Share button and then switch the selection to On your Page. Then make sure the right Page is selected and the post will be shared by your Page.

You can find public lists that other people have created by going to Facebook Add List (this is the same URL you use to create your own list). They first show you some of the lists that your friends have created or may be on and then they sort the popular lists by topic.

#5: Use Google Reader and Google Alerts

If you have several (or even several hundred) blogs you enjoy reading that provide great content, use Google Reader to access them all from one place. You can easily see the latest posts or just click on the particular blog in the left sidebar to see some of their latest posts. (Yes, Google Reader is going away so you might try switching to Feedly)

Google Alerts are another great way to monitor the web for fresh content. Google Alerts use the latest relevant Google results and send them as an aggregated set of stories to your email address.

You can use keywords related to your niche and have a set of fresh posts brought to your email inbox every day.

You can sign up here for Google Alerts. If you find that your keywords aren’t bringing the right content in, you can always delete the alert by clicking “Manage your alerts” in the lower-left corner.

Having your company name as an alert is also useful to watch for any new mentions of your company on the web.

#6: Look for Funny Posts

People are typically on social media to have fun and be social. Even if you’re a more serious brand, don’t forget to lighten up every once in a while with a humorous post. Humor can be difficult and you always run the risk of offending someone, so be careful.

George Takei posts a lot of humor (but not all posts are appropriate for a business Page).

Sometimes you can create your own funny posts using sites like Quickmeme orSomeecards.

Or you can find sites that post a lot of funny content such as Know Your Memeor Cheezburger.

Just make sure you know the rules of the sites and understand how you can share their content so you don’t have any problems with copyrights.

#7: Create Your Own Images

Images are still getting a lot of engagement on Facebook. They continue to get a lot of comments, likes and shares even if they don’t have the same reach as a text post.

Images take up more space in the news feed and 0are generally more interesting than a plain text post.

But what if you don’t have many pictures to share? You can find images to illustrate a point at sites like iStockphoto or 123RF (you can’t just find images on Google and upload them to Facebook).

If you would like to find free images, you can use the Creative Commons area on Flickr or stock.xchng (make sure you read the guidelines on giving proper attribution).

You can also use Compfight to help you search for photos that you can use. You can use the Commercial hotlink to see which ones are for business use (again, make sure you read about proper attribution).

If you want to add your own text to the photo to illustrate a point or add some special effects to make the picture more interesting, use an online editing tool like PicMonkey or iPiccy.

Special quotes are popular things to share on Facebook, but you can use these tools to turn the quote into something more visual. Of course if you’re well-versed in something like Photoshop, creating an image to use is a breeze.

You may also have an occasion to take a screenshot and edit it. This technique works really well if you’re teaching something about websites or computers.

At Social Media Examiner, we frequently have “Hot Tip Tuesday” where we share a hot tip from one of the social sites.

Use a screenshot tool such as Jing or Snagit to help you easily create and edit screenshots.

#8: Monitor Your Stats

Finally, make sure you watch what works with your audience.

Dive into your Facebook Insights and sort the posts you have by Engaged Users. The Engaged Users stats include the number of unique users who have clicked on your posts, which can include people clicking on the photo or link, liking the post, commenting or sharing your post.

Notice what types of posts your audience responds to and post more of those.

Hopefully this gives you a running start to find more awesome content that your audience will love.

Once you get some of your favorite content creators in place, don’t forget to continue to monitor the web for new sources of great content. And make sure you work in plenty of your own original content!

What about you? Where are you finding your best content to share on Facebook? Let us know in the comments below.

Note: This post originally appeared on Social Media Examiner and is reposted with permission.