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Social Media Marketing Podcast helps your business thrive with social media

Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner


Podcast Overview

Social Media Examiner’s Michael Stelzner helps your business navigate the social jungle with success stories and expert interviews from leading social media marketing pros. Discover how successful businesses employ social media, learn new strategies and tactics, and gain actionable tips to improve your social media marketing. Find show notes at http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/podcast/

Podcast Episodes

Video Authenticity: How to Perform On-Camera

Do you want to connect with your audience via video? Looking for tips to convey confidence and authority? To explore how to improve your on-camera performance, I interview David H. Lawrence XVII. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview David H. Lawrence XVII, an actor and professional voice artist. You may recognize him as the Puppet Master from the TV show Heroes. He specializes in audio and video communication and his course is called Camera Ready U, where he helps actors and marketers with their on-camera performances. David explores ways to be yourself in front of the camera. You'll discover how to prepare for a video performance. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Video Authenticity David's Story David started as a voiceover talent and moved into on-camera work. In both cases, after David found success, people asked him how he achieved that success. At events such as Social Media Marketing World, David talked about simple things people can do on-camera to be authoritative or authentic. For instance, he talks about how to hold your hands, what to do with your eyes, or how to hold your posture. After speaking, David would be mobbed by people asking about his course, so he decided to create one. As David developed his course, he discovered he knew so much more than he realized about his area of expertise. David created an inventory of all of the things he knew and that became the Camera Ready U curriculum. The same thing happened with voiceovers. David started by teaching commercials and ultimately created 36 different classes for VO2GoGo, covering not just the art of voiceover, but also the business and technology aspects. Listen to the show to discover how long David has been in the entertainment industry. Least Important Factors for Video Videos don't have to be perfect. Comb your hair, brush your teeth, put on makeup, wear your cool outfit, and whatever else you need to establish your base. After you do that, the key is not to be a better version of yourself, but your most authentic self with all of your flaws. That's what makes you human. Don't kick yourself if you flub a word or don't remember to turn your shoulder. People will connect with you when you're simply being yourself. And you can't be yourself when you're constantly trying to be that better version of yourself. The notion of perfection gets in the way of being real. Also, your equipment doesn't matter. If you want to get very artsy, you might need a more expensive camera. But you don't even need to buy a camera. You can start vlogging immediately with your smartphone. You may need to add a light, but you can simply set up a table lamp. Plus, you might want to get a $20 lavaliere microphone from Amazon. And that's it. You can do whatever you want with that minimal setup. Listen to the show to hear David and me discuss how people can hold themselves back with an "I can't until I..." mentality. Authenticity On-Camera Have you ever watched a video and thought, "This guy's a bag of wind" or "She's fake"? It's because they've spent too much time trying to present and too little time being themselves. The people viewers connect with most often are those who seem down to earth and genuinely interested in the subject. When you stop worrying about how you look and sound, you can start thinking about the content. And when you can focus on your content, viewers feel you're speaking to them. You make a connection. When you're completely interested, immersed, and can't wait to help people with their needs, your authenticity meter goes through the roof.

Facebook Ads: Creative Ways to Attract Prospects and Customers

Do you advertise on Facebook? Are your ads converting? To explore how to better use Facebook ads to reach leads and customers, I interview Zach Spuckler. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Zach Spuckler, a Facebook ads expert and host of the Heart, Soul & Hustle podcast, a show about generating more leads, sales, and conversions. His course is called Rock Your FB Ads. Zach shares his framework for building leads with Facebook ads. You'll discover mistakes many marketers make with Facebook ads. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Ads Zach's Story Over the last 10 years, Zach has dabbled in most forms of online marketing, including affiliate marketing, direct sales, website flipping, consulting, and Facebook ads. About two and a half years ago, Zach was running a successful vegan food blog called The No Fuss Vegan as a hobby while working a job and studying for a master's degree. As the blog grew, the hours of work that Zach put into developing recipes, and styling and shooting photos for his blog left him feeling burnt out. He liked what he was doing but he didn't love it. Zach took three months off to explore what work made him happy and realized it was marketing. He loved testing his ads, and messaging and building his list. That's when he launched Heart, Soul & Hustle. When Zach started this business, he was committed to a foundational principle: Instead of teaching people theories that worked, his teaching would be grounded in what he had learned through experience. His first digital course came out a few months later. He had been doing one-on-one Facebook ad management using Periscope for promotion. Zach did a Periscope at Starbucks, saying, "I can't really teach you how to make a million dollars. I'm not a six-figure coach. But I have gotten my income up to about $1,000 a week on Periscope. Is that something you want to learn about?" He set up a PayPal button in real time and did about $1,200 in sales. That's when everything started to come together. Zach realized he could own his expertise without faking it. He could be fully transparent and show people what he was doing at his current level, and that approach would resonate with people. Zach's passion has always been ads, and his intention when he started the company was to create a Facebook ads course. However, everybody wanted to learn about live streaming, so he tabled the ads program in response to his market. However, he still launched the program a year later and has had a blast testing everything with Facebook ads such as Messenger, retargeting, and Facebook Live. About a year ago, Zach realized he had become a total workaholic and could use Facebook advertising to help him do the heavy lifting. He scaled up his ad spend and hired an ads manager. Although Zach emphasizes that ads don't do all of the work, his ads nevertheless work for him whether or not he can show up on a particular day. Today, hundreds of people take Zach's courses. His company does launches with thousands of people, they have incredible affiliates, and they've been affiliates. Investing in advertising has opened so many doors that he can't help but get excited about it. Listen to the show to hear about Zach's earliest experience working online. Facebook Ad Mistakes The market has been evolving but marketers aren't all keeping pace. A few years ago, you could run a Facebook ad to a sales page and make money. You could even run ads directly to a checkout page. But back then, most Facebook users didn't realize that a sponsored post in the news feed was an advertisement. Today,

Creating Advanced Facebook Custom Audiences Using Google Tag Manager

Are you looking for advanced ways to build Facebook audiences for retargeting? Do you know you can combine Google Tag Manager with Facebook Pixel Events? To explore the value of using these tools together, I interview Chris Mercer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Chris Mercer, an analytics expert who specializes in helping marketers measure and optimize their marketing. His course is called Master the Fundamentals of Google Tag Manager. You can find him at MeasurementMarketing.io. Chris explores how to use Google Tag Manager to take your Facebook retargeting to the next level. You'll discover how to create and use Facebook Pixel Events in your Facebook marketing. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Pixel Events and Google Tag Manager Chris's Story Chris, who has a background in sales and marketing, left corporate America to investigate online business. Five or six years ago, he started a site called WP Training Videos. The site was designed to help people understand and learn WordPress, but after customers requested help with building websites, the company's business model changed. To learn about analytics, Chris installed Google Analytics and set up tracking on opt-in and lead generation forms. When he showed his analytics to a client, the client stopped asking about changing the website design and wanted to learn more about tracking results. Chris soon had more clients who were interested in analytics, and about four or five years ago, the business pivoted again. Chris's business became Measurement Marketing, which is dedicated to making Google Analytics more accessible to the masses. His clients were often people who installed Google Analytics but didn't know how to use it. Today, Chris works with marketers, marketing teams, and agencies. He shows them what's important to measure, helps them build measurement machines, and shares what to do with the data they collect. Listen to the show to discover one of the biggest struggles for marketers. What Is Google Tag Manager? Google Tag Manager is a tool that was designed to solve an enterprise-level problem. The problem arose about 10 years ago when this new upstart, Facebook, started putting out pixels (snippets of code to copy and paste on a site) that enabled marketers to track things online. It was revolutionary at the time. After the Facebook pixel arrived, large businesses had to figure out how to bridge the gap between marketing and IT. To add the code to web pages, marketing had to submit IT help desk tickets, because IT developers were the only people allowed to mess with the website. As a result, IT departments developed bottlenecks and couldn't focus on the right projects, and marketing teams couldn't get the pixels on the pages fast enough. By the time IT added a pixel to a page, the campaign that marketing wanted to measure had been over for eight weeks. Tag Manager was created to solve that problem. Marketing teams can use it to put out individual snippets of tracking code (for instance, a Facebook remarketing or conversion pixel) that they can use at any point without having to involve developers. Tag Manager gives marketers granular control over their measurement and tracking. I ask about the difference between Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, and Chris explains Google Analytics does three main things. It collects its data, stores the data, and builds reports based on the data. Google Tag Manager replaces Google Analytics' ability to collect its own data. Tag Manager collects the data and sends it to Google Analytics so it can stor...

Live Video Strategy: How to Create a Show That Engages

Interested in broadcasting live video? Have you considered starting a live video show? To explore how to create a successful live video show, I interview Luria Petrucci. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Luria Petrucci, a live video expert. She's the host of Live Streaming Pros, a live show dedicated to helping businesses produce professional live streams. She's helped big brands such as AT&T and Panasonic, and influencers such as Michael Hyatt, Amy Porterfield, and Pat Flynn. Luria explores four levels of broadcasting equipment. You'll discover how to create an engaging flow for your live show. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Live Video Strategy Luria's Story Luria got started with video in 2005. She was one of the first video podcasters to create content for the video iPod. (This was before the iPhone and long before YouTube "became a thing.") Shortly thereafter, Luria started doing live video, too. By 2007, she was live-streaming from a professional studio and from mobile devices and began learning how live video creates a connection with her audience. Ever since, she's been doing a weekly or daily show. Before Periscope and Facebook Live, Luria's live-streaming tech included a NewTek TriCaster and Ustream. She also did some YouTube. Justin.tv (which is now Twitch) and Livestream were the other early platforms, although they focused more on business. Although Ustream focuses more on businesses now, it concentrated on creators back then. Luria enjoys seeing other people getting excited about going live, because she's believed in live video for so long. She says live video creates a strong relationship with her audience and is the reason her audience has stuck with her for 11 years through massive business changes, partnership changes, and all of the hard stuff that goes on in business. People tell her they've been watching her since day one. (Note: Back then, Luria was known as Cali Lewis.) Listen to the show to discover what tech Luria used in the early days, as well as what live video was like at the beginning. Why Consider Live Video Live video is the best marketing conversion tool Luria has ever seen because of its impact. When people are watching you on live video, they know you're not faking it. When you're selling something or trying to lead people into a funnel, live video is easy because of what Luria calls the "conversational call to action." Like most people, Luria has a hard time selling. People don't like to sell because they don't like to be sold to. The conversational call to action is really about helping people. You're letting them know you're there for them and will take care of them. When you offer something in a live video, it's easier to sell it because you're not really selling. When somebody asks a question, your answer proves the value of your products or services. Also, although the excitement for and accessibility of live video is new, its formulas and structure are proven. Listen to the show to hear what I love about live video. The Four Levels of Live Video Gear Luria explains what gear you need for live video in four levels. She calls level 1 the "selfie stream." You hold your mobile phone in your hand and the live video is raw, up-close, and personal. For level 2, add some gear to your mobile phone such as a microphone, video stabilizer, and a light. This gear adds a little polish to your video and removes the shakiness. Level 3 is going live from a computer with software like Wirecast. Finally, level 4 is for TV-quality video.

Social Customer Care: Apps and Processes for Success

How does your business respond to customer concerns and inquiries? Do you have a social customer care plan in place? To explore how to improve customer care for your business, I interview Dan Gingiss. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Dan Gingiss, author of Winning at Social Customer Care, head of global social media at McDonald's, and host of the Focus on Customer Service podcast. Dan explores the most important qualities of social care representatives. You'll discover tools to make providing social customer care easier. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Social Customer Care Why Social Customer Care Is Important Offline experiences don't stay offline for long, Dan explains, particularly when they're bad. They get discussed online and things can get out of control. (Just watch the news!) Marketers need to care because they're the ones at the helm of social media handles. Plus, whenever you do social media marketing (organic or paid, but especially paid), people ask customer service questions. When people see your brand in their feeds, they remember their questions or problems. Your marketing is their reminder. More marketing leads to more people talking back. And that can be a good thing. Listen to the show to discover what marketers should never say. Who Should Do Social Customer Care The ideal people for social customer service are those who are naturally empathetic, want to talk to customers and solve their problems, and can remain calm when an angry customer is yelling at them. You don't need to involve everyone, and the people who are involved should like talking to people. These days, social customer care agents are doing work that blurs the line with community management. Which role deals with someone commenting on your really cool sponsorship with the NFL versus someone asking a question about your product or service versus a customer who is really angry because you screwed up? That line may not always be clear. When the marketing department owned all of social media, they were okay with the first two. They loved talking about football and could answer questions. However, when they started getting complaints or complicated questions, they had to call customer service for backup. Customer service's job was to know about the products and services, how to fix things when they went wrong, and most importantly, how to talk to other people. A social customer care agent could be a phone rep, an email rep, or a chat rep. Depending on the size of your organization, the social person may need to have phone skills as well as writing skills. In a large company, people in customer service may work only on the phone, chat, or social. But in a smaller business, one person might handle phone calls and Twitter. However your organization divides up the work of customer service, Dan emphasizes that everyone involved should have the same customer service training. Customers should have a consistent experience, no matter which customer service channel they choose. You've probably seen examples of people calling a company, talking to an agent, and not liking the answer. So they go to Twitter to get a different answer. The biggest mistake the company can make is to give a different answer on Twitter because then you teach everybody to just go to Twitter. Listen to the show to hear Dan discuss what skills customer care agents might need in the near future. Customer Support Bots Although bots have a role in customer support, they still have a ways to go. For instance, Dan tried using a bot to buy flowers and when he needed...

Facebook Video Retargeting for Live Video and Beyond

Do you post videos on Facebook? Have you tried retargeting your live and uploaded videos? To explore techniques for retargeting your videos, I interview Amanda Bond. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Amanda Bond, who's known as the "Ad Strategist" specializing in Facebook ads. Amanda also advises top social pros and has taught the ADdicted Facebook Ads course. Online, she's known simply as Bond. Amanda explores Facebook video ads and retargeting. You'll discover how to use Amanda's technique to warm up your Facebook followers. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Video Retargeting for Live Video and Beyond Amanda's Story Before Amanda started working in social media marketing, she worked with big brands such as Pepsi and Labatt. As a salesperson for Pepsi, she went door to door to compete with Coke. After she sent two truckloads of Pepsi to a store for a large sale, Coke sent three. Looking over 110 pallets of pop, Amanda realized that the impact she was having in her sales role wasn't aligned with where she wanted to show up in the world. To move forward, Amanda decided to give back through her local Rotary service club. As the club's youngest member, she was encouraged to become their social media manager. When Amanda started working with her Rotary club in 2013, social media marketing felt like magic. Talking to people on the Internet seemed to create relationships out of thin air. However, Amanda quickly learned the impact of social when she used social media marketing for a live local Rotary event. To promote the event, the Rotary club used traditional marketing such as ads in the newspaper, and Amanda used everything she'd been learning about social media marketing. Throughout the weekend, the club expected 4,000 people to attend, but 23,000 people actually came, largely due to social media. That was Amanda's impetus to change direction in her career and she became a social media manager. As she became more versed in Facebook ads, she found that being an ad strategist was a great niche for her as a math and data nerd. Amanda now teaches and helps other businesses behind the scenes. She loves doing the deep dives into the data, helping people see the story the numbers are telling. Listen to the show to hear about Social Media Examiner's role in Amanda's early social media marketing efforts. What Retargeting Means The words retargeting and remarketing are interchangeable. Most people know about retargeting through the Facebook pixel, which is a tiny code snippet you add to your website. When someone lands on a page with this code, the Facebook pixel sends a message back to Facebook, saying something important is happening. Facebook has opened up new ways to retarget people (or show them content or ads based on prior actions), including video retargeting. Because Facebook has been emphasizing live video and video in the news feed, Amanda is especially excited about these video retargeting features. Anytime somebody sees at least three seconds of a video (recorded or live), Facebook takes note of who they are and puts them into a retargeting custom audience that you can use to retarget them again and again. I ask why you would want to retarget someone who watched a Facebook video. Amanda says it's part of getting people to know, like, and trust your brand. You want to start nurturing conversations that may lead to a sales transaction. As the Ad Strategist, she calls this framework "Connect, Convert, Close." In that connection phase, your audience may be cold (they may not know or have heard of you),

Influencer Marketing: How to Scale Your Social Media Exposure

Wondering how to increase your business's reach on social media? Have you considered partnering with an influencer? To explore how to develop business relationships with influencers, I interview Neal Schaffer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Neal Schaffer, author of three social media books including Maximize Your Social. He teaches social media strategy at Rutgers University and is the founder of PDCA Social, an agency that specializes in helping Japanese businesses leverage American social media platforms. Neal explores the difference between paid and earned influencers. You'll discover how to use influencer marketing to scale your social media results. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Influencer Marketing Why Influencer Marketing? Social media is a noisy place and the days of 100% organic success are over. Brands, companies, and practitioners need to use paid social to get noticed. In this environment, Neal believes other people can accelerate your social media marketing efforts. Put simply, you need to consider other users on social media who might be able to help spread the word about your brand and amplify your message. Neal identifies three different types of "others": your employees or partners (employee advocacy), your fans (brand advocacy), and influencers (also known as influencer marketing). Each type is powerful in its own way, and in 2017, influencer marketing is the most mainstream. It can help you cut through the noise in a different way than paid social. Plus, influencer marketing is ideally more authentic and leads to more engagement. I ask Neal to explain what influencer marketing is, for people who are new to the concept. Neal says influencer marketing involves partnering with people who have influence over others. In the old days, newspaper writers and television broadcasters had tremendous influence. Now, in certain online or social media communities, people on YouTube or Instagram are famous and influential in a way that's similar to big-name media celebrities. Some social media influencers focus on one network, such as Instagram or YouTube, whereas others have appeal across several platforms. With influencer marketing, you work with an influencer who talks about your brand, and those mentions of your product or service have a positive effect on your business. People become influencers on social media because they're creating their own valuable content. They have a regular audience that cares about the influencer's tips, recommendations, or other content. However, unlike a true celebrity, a person doesn't need a million followers or subscribers to be an influencer. They need to have relevance only in their community. For example, a YouTuber may have never heard of a podcasting influencer. That's okay. The podcaster needs to have influence only within their specific podcasting community. Listen to the show to hear more about how social influencers compare to big-name celebrities. How to Discover and Evaluate Potential Influencers To begin, use listening tools and do keyword searches to learn who in your industry is talking about topics or products relevant to your business. For instance, a consumer brand selling to moms needs to know which mommy bloggers are talking about products similar to theirs, or which Instagrammers are taking photos and using hashtags related to their products. A B2B company needs to seek out tech bloggers who carry a lot of weight. Remember, influence isn't only about the number of followers. Find people who are producing content that seems to have an effect.

Local Social Media Marketing With Facebook and Instagram

How do you promote your business locally? Are you using Facebook and Instagram? To explore how to reach a local customer base on social media, I interview Bruce Irving. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Bruce Irving, the host of the Smart Pizza Marketing podcast, where he helps local pizza restaurants master marketing. He's a former pizzeria owner and you can find him at SmartPizzaMarketing.com. Bruce explores why social media marketing is worthwhile for local businesses. You'll discover tips to get your local business started with social media video. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Marketing for Local Business Bruce's Story Bruce has been in the pizza industry since he was 16 years old. He worked his way up and then partnered with someone to run his own pizza business. The restaurant did a pretty high volume of sales for their style of restaurant, which had 10 seats plus takeout and delivery. Starting in the late 1990s, Bruce and his partner used old marketing methods such as direct mail, which worked well until the mid-2000s. Around 2008, the effectiveness of that kind of marketing started to dwindle, so they tried marketing their restaurant on social media. Even as the economy struggled after the 2008 economic crash, their pizza business was successful and growing. When relatives and friends in the pizza business started asking how Bruce and his business partner used different types of marketing to grow, they began sharing their methods. Bruce decided he wanted to talk to other pizzeria operators so they could learn from each other. In 2015, Bruce started his podcast and the knowledge-gathering he did for it evolved into creating an agency that helps local pizza-specific restaurants run social media and digital advertising. For the last 16 months, Bruce has been running the agency full time, helping local pizzerias grow their business and get better results with online marketing. Listen to the show to discover why podcasting was a great way for Bruce to learn from other business owners while running his own pizza restaurant. Video in Social Media A pizzeria is a very visual style of restaurant. The cooks often work the pizza dough and put together pizzas in front of a big window because it's entertaining. Even more traditional restaurants are moving to the open-kitchen concept because the chef creating the food is part of the show. To bring this entertaining element to the web, Bruce encourages clients to do video. A lot of them shy away from video in the beginning, but it's important to become comfortable in front of the camera. Different styles of videos work in any business, not just restaurants. For instance, you can do tutorials. You can also give people a look behind the scenes. If you have the best pizza in town, show your fans why. Do you make your own dough? Do you use a special kind of sauce? Do you cut up all of your own vegetables? Showing what makes your restaurant special helps you compete with every other place in your neighborhood and the big chains. Your personality also differentiates you from your competitors. If you're a personable owner and can be charismatic in front of the camera, your personality (along with your products and services) separates you from other brands.   It's all in the sauce - the special Stanislaus Pizza Sauce married with PizzaMan Dan's secret blend of spices - which makes your PizzaMan Dan's pizza mouth watering delectable! TODAY ONLY - yes, MONDAY - we're celebrating our long time relationship with the family-owned Stanislaus Farms in Stanislaus Count...

Facebook Ads Strategy: How Marketers Can Win With Facebook

Do you use Facebook ads? Want to make them more effective? To explore how to create a successful Facebook ads strategy, I interview Nicholas Kusmich. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Nicholas Kusmich, author of Give: The Ultimate Guide to Using Facebook Advertising to Generate More Leads, More Clients, and Massive ROI. He also heads up the H2H Media Group, where he consults and manages accounts for high-profile speakers and authors. Nicholas shares how the four M's can help you plan your Facebook ad strategy. You'll discover the three key elements every Facebook ad needs. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Ads Strategy Nicholas' Story Nicholas got into Facebook ads almost by accident. He had been marketing his products on the Internet without any success, even though he followed what everyone said to do: Create a course or ebook, and get paid traffic to sell it. His next step was to try Google ads, but then Google had another algorithm adjustment. Fortunately, around that time, two websites' ad platforms were being released in beta: Plenty of Fish (the dating site) and Facebook. Nicholas jumped in to advertise his products on both and soon realized Facebook was going in a very aggressive direction. He was in the right place at the right time. Nicholas learned about Facebook advertising very quickly and got the advantage of being an early adopter. This was about five years ago. These days, Nicholas runs his marketing business with two key services. His boutique agency serves clients in a fully managed scenario. His business also offers marketing training and consulting for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to implement their marketing for themselves. Listen to the show to hear what Facebook ads were like in the early days. The Role of Facebook Ads in Marketing Nicholas loves the paradox of Facebook's size. On one hand, Facebook is an enormous platform: around two billion users log in for at least a few minutes each day. Therefore, regardless of your type of business or message, your prospects are probably using Facebook. Moreover, you don't need a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl to reach hundreds of millions of people. With Facebook, you can do that with a few clicks of a button. On the other hand, Facebook allows advertisers to zero in on a small, specific audience because Facebook aggregates data. Facebook notes where people check in, what they like, whom they follow, and what they mention. And it makes that kind of information available to advertisers. So, for instance, if Nicholas wanted to target a Beverly Hills housewife who lives on a particular street based on her zip code, and who shops at Whole Foods, has an Amex card, and spent money on it in the last seven days or so, he could. This capability makes Facebook an interesting platform for an advertiser (a business owner or entrepreneur) who has a message, product, or service and who knows the audience they're trying to reach. Facebook allows people to advertise at far lower cost than traditional advertising. So in the grand scheme of marketing, Nicholas believes Facebook advertising is the best direct-response platform and distribution channel to get a message to your ideal prospects. Listen to the show to discover the joke at Nicholas' office. How to Put Together a Facebook Ads Strategy A lot of people focus on the tactics, such as how much to bid for the ad or what objective to use. Those are legitimate concerns, but Nicholas doesn't think they're the big needle-movers.

Facebook Video for Marketers: Strategy for Future Success

Do you create videos for your business? Wondering how to best leverage your videos on Facebook? To explore Facebook video strategy, I interview Jay Baer. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. In this episode, I interview Jay Baer, a digital marketing and social media strategist. He authored Hug Your Haters, a book about social care, and also hosts the Social Pros Podcast and the Jay Today show. Jay discusses the differences between video on Facebook and YouTube. You'll discover the tech and tools Jay uses to produce his own videos. Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below. Listen Now You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Video for Marketers Facebook Versus YouTube Jay says a lot of people do very well with YouTube videos, and just as many do well with Facebook videos. However, not too many people do equally well with both because each platform has a specific use case. People watch YouTube as a replacement for television entertainment or they're searching for how-to videos. On Facebook, videos appear in the news feed and can interrupt people while they're on the platform. At Convince & Convert, Jay says they advise clients to think about what the video is and under what circumstances people will want to watch it. Based on that assessment, choose one of the platforms as the primary home for the video. I mention how views of The Last Jedi trailer on Facebook far surpassed views on YouTube within the first 30 minutes of its release. Jay responds by noting a few factors that might have contributed to that difference at that particular point in time. One is that Facebook allows users to share content with others easily. Also, Facebook defines a "view" differently than YouTube. Although we both suspect most viewers of The Last Jedi are watching the whole trailer, marketers should remember that Facebook counts 3 seconds as a view, whereas YouTube requires 30 seconds. Also, a video on Facebook may receive substantially more views immediately after it's posted but the YouTube video may receive more views in the long run, especially on a strong YouTube channel. To clarify how The Last Jedi example pertains to the everyday marketer, Jay stresses that Facebook drives exposure based on engagement. So if you put a video on Facebook and a disproportionate number of people like, comment, and share, then a disproportionate number of people will see the video in their feed. This visibility gives even more Facebook users an opportunity to share the video with somebody else, and the cycle continues. Jay sees this ripple effect every time he posts a video on Facebook. If he gets immediate engagement, then more people see it. If he doesn't, users' engagement with the video will plateau. Next we talk about streaming live video to Facebook versus YouTube. For vlogging, Jay says that you could use both Facebook and YouTube. Jay does something like this with his Jay Today show. He streams the live video first on his personal Facebook profile and posts the video file elsewhere afterward. Jay explains that Facebook's API prevents you from live-streaming anywhere else while you're streaming to Facebook Live. To stream to Facebook Live, Periscope, and YouTube Live simultaneously, you would need multiple phones or computers. That limitation is one reason Jay goes to Facebook Live first; he can't be anywhere else. He also notes that on YouTube (for now at least), you need to have 1,000 or more subscribers to stream live video from a mobile device. So YouTube's live video feature isn't as widely accessible as Facebook's. Listen to the show to hear Jay discuss his approach t...

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