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Marketers, Make Facebook network your best tool to run highly effective ads to attract more customers. More than budget, invest in the following strategies.

With 1,700 million users, of which 1.3 billion are active daily - according to the latest investor report released in July 2016 - Facebook is the largest social network in the world. So, it is very likely that a lot of your customers are browsing it.

Given these numbers, it is no surprise that the Facebook advertising platform is the most advanced and efficient method to generate traffic to websites, conversions, and sales. However, the Blue Giant continually launches new features on this platform. Between August and September alone, it introduced a feature that allows users to turn on and off the presence of ads in their biography; also, a new version of Messenger for sales, this through the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence makes the chat of the social network as an additional sales channel.

On the other hand, Dynamic Ads, mobile optimization, pixel usage and video enhancements are some features of Facebook that will help you achieve great results with your marketing campaigns. Just a few minutes to monitor user behavior to check the effectiveness of your strategies and actions.

However, many times these constant changes can provoke the frustration of the companies, whose efforts are cracked before obtaining an economic benefit. No matter how many campaigns we launch at my agency, advertisers make the same mistakes all the time; Which causes a high dropout rate, even when they are very close to achieving the first goals.

Here are some practical ways to work with Facebook. Eye: just some minor adjustments are needed to build campaigns that not only deliver results, but also a return on investment you make. 

Six Basic Tips on "How to use Facebook to promote your business."

1. Order your data

The Facebook tool " audience insight " shows the page statistics and the response of your customers. With it, you collect data on topics that generate the most interest among your audience. For example, "Demography," the first tab of the platform, will allow you to know the sex and age of those who have been interested in a particular topic. The second tab ("like" page) lists other possible relevant interests for your target audience. It also lists them by importance and affinity and measures the probability that one person belonging to one interest group shares the likes of another.

2. Separate your ads

The vast majority of advertisers pick up the groups determined in the previous step, hoping to reach a mass audience. This is a grave mistake and will cost you money. You can get some results, but you will not know which one generated them. The solution: includes an interest for advertisement, with this you can monitor with which you get a better response compared to the investment.

3. Make changes slowly

To get the best return on your investment in your advertising, you may be tempted to adjust ad text, images, targeting and budgeting at the beginning of the campaign. Although it is most advisable to make changes gradually and notice frequently, and thus allow the Facebook algorithm to adjust. According to my experience, it takes three to five days for the original ad to reach an appropriate number of people, and to throw significant data to analyze. If it is really necessary to change something in the ad, create a new one and let both be on the platform; In this way, you can compare which is the one that gets better results.

4. Analyze your data and adjust

There is a lot of risks when you ignore the data that Facebook provides. Yes, it will give you valuable information like age, gender, placement (the device used), and the country or region that is generating the best results. You will also see the relevance of the ad and its punctuation. This is based on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least relevant and 10 being the most. The more relevant your ad is, the less you pay, and the more it shows, the lower the cost. You can also see your active and negative scores. These are not so clear, although broadly if you write a good ad that you like and is shared by users, you will have a high positive feedback.

5. Always try

In my agency, we carry the account of several clients, and we are always making adjustments and variations. We try different interests with the target audience and experiment with different images, text, and actions (such as interactive and static ads). It can be exhausting to make small changes regularly and observe the data generated; However, the success of your campaigns on Facebook depends on it. Ads lose relevance quickly, and their cost starts to increase while decreasing their effectiveness. We combat this with experimentation and tracking of results.

6. Bet on winners

There will be no effective ads. That is a fact when it comes to the Facebook platform. The faster you eliminate, the less relevant and scalable ads to the more pertinent, the longer the results will be seen sooner. Every three to five days you'll have the information you need to know whether or not a set of ads will make a profit.

There are many myths circulating on the Internet, some are about aliens invading the planet or the "end of the world". Of course, they are wrong.

Just as there are these myths, there are several myths about social networks, and Facebook is the main character of the novel.
Facebook with about 1 billion users is the Social Network "default" 50% of people in the world with Internet access. No other social network approaches its level of global acceptance.

Because of this, Facebook has the "power" to change the way we communicate. And to mention "Social Media Marketing" the first thing that comes to mind is Facebook, and get more followers, or create an application.

With this we can see how Facebook has taken root in our lives, and that has led us to believe some things that are not true, and it is important to clarify:

Myth # 1 - Facebook will not change the rules of the game

An important aspect that you must understand about social networks is that they are always changing, and hope that the rules of the game change is not something that you can not afford.

The reality is that facebook is not accountable to anyone, and will always be changing the rules until fit your vision and business interests. For example:
Posting Frenzy on Facebook

Now, Facebook users are experiencing a frenzy of publications, where many people and brands are posting funny pictures of dogs, cats and even aliens, only to get more attention!

All this due to changing its algorithm Edge Rank.

Myth #2 - Marketing on Facebook is always free

Facebook is a free social network and platform monetized through advertising. Google+ does not need display ads to its users, because the gold mine is Google Adwords.

So Facebook is always looking for new revenue streams, as they now have shareholders to please.

The next step in Facebook is monetizing the mobile platform Instagram, for which they paid 1 billion dollars.

Myth #3 - Everyone sees my posts

Once upon a time, this statement might have been true. Facebook has massively reduced the “organic reach” of brands to encourage more use of its advertising platform. Only 1 percent of their fans will see any of their posts unless they’re “boosted” (paid for). That’s today’s reality, and you’re going to have work in within it if you want to build a sustainable presence on Facebook.

Myth #4 - You are the owner of your Account

The reality is that we are all simple users, and we have to meet their conditions.
Facebook violates a rule and pay the consequences ... that's the reality.
Example:
Recently, Facebook closed the account of the website "The Cool Hunter," which had 700,000 followers, due to violations of Copyright.

Myth #5 - More posts equals more likes

Although consistent posting is important (all social algorithms reward volume), what matters more is the success of your effort to provide actual value – not just volume – to your followers and fans. Be thoughtful. Be careful. As a brand or branded individual, success means sending out interesting, authentic, relevant content on a regular basis.

Myth #6 - You own the content you post

Facebook owns the gallery world's largest photo, where users upload about 300 million photos every day.
People consider Facebook as an online hard drive, where they can upload all the content they want, but according to the terms of service of facebook, that content is not owned by its members.

Therefore, be sure to save all important photos and files that you upload to Facebook, also on your own computer.
Myths solutions:

I should stop my marketing on Facebook? The answer is that Social despite its constant changes Networks are a powerful marketing medium for your brand. So do not give them. Adapt.

Here are 4 tips to the current state of Facebook:
1- Demand
I publish more content on your property sites
A place of your property is basically a site to which you bought the domain, hosting and have created the content it has.

Be sure to post most of the content on your blog. It is important to create online assets.

2- Create a mailing list
It is true, mails are not as attractive as messages on Facebook, but have a particular advantage. You are the master of your list!

3- Invest in your Blog Optimizing for search engines
On average, 75% of visits to websites are receiving from search engines, and visits are free!

4- Diversify
Facebook is not the only social network. Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube are also excellent marketing platforms.

It is important that diversification your marketing campaigns. Never put all your eggs in one basket!

Myth #7 - Build it and they will come

Facebook is a marketing channel and you’ll need to work to integrate it with any other marketing channels you’re using. Once your page is launched, its URL needs to be listed in all of your marketing materials, linked to from your website, and installed in your email template. The most successful businesses are the ones that best integrate their social channels with their pre-existing marketing channels, creating a seamless experience among them -- the result is a much faster-growing fan base.
 
Concluding
They are all your social marketing campaigns based on Facebook? What would you do if you lost everything you've accomplished in Facebook?

It is important to know the facts about Facebook, and be cautious. Diversification can be your salvation to any sudden problem.

References: Myths of Facebook Marketing

Facebook expanded its video live-streaming feature to more users by making it available to US Android users.



Live-streaming allows users to start live video broadcasts from withing the Facebook mobile app.

The feature competes with Twitter's Periscope app.
Facebook Live already had been available to US iOS users.
In addition, Facebook expanded the iOS feature to more than 30 countries.

Facebook Video Live Streaming at Android & iOS

To use the new feature on the iOS or Android mobile app, be sure to have the latest version of the Facebook app.  Then tap the status update icon and then tap the Live Video icon.

We know that people on Android love interacting with live videos —more than 50% of people watching live videos are using Android devices. We’re excited to announce that in the next week we are going to start rolling out the ability for people on Android to share live video. We’re starting our Android roll-out in the U.S., with more countries coming soon.


To share live video, simply tap “What’s on your mind?” at the top of News Feed and select the Live Video icon. You can write a quick description and select the audience before going live.

Facebook Live is also available to public figures and Pages. Learn more in our Help Center. 

Lights! Camera! Action!  You'll broadcast live to your Facebook connections.
Enjoy!

Facebook has enjoyed boasting about their highly active users over the past few years. One statistics that they often state is that 50 percent of “active users” log in to the site on a daily basis. Facebook has most definitely changed the way we interact with each other and for many it has become heavily integrated into our daily lives. I decided to compile the top reasons that users log in to the site and have posted them below.

1. Stalk People

Let’s be honest, there are many motives behind connecting with others and on Facebook one of those primary motives is to stalk people! One of the best things about Facebook’s stalking features is that they are about to be upgraded! With the real-time news feed, you will be able to see a lot more about what your friends are doing in real-time. So go ahead, stalk your friends and don’t worry because they’ll never know!

2. Share Photos

Facebook is now the largest photo sharing site on the web. The main reason for this growth is the ability to tag your friends in photos. While social tagging has been around before Facebook, tight integration into the social graph has proven to be extremely powerful. It also naturally improves your ability to stalk people given that they are constantly being tagged by others.

3. Play Addictive Games

When Facebook opened their platform two years ago they weren’t expecting the site to become the central platform for the future of social gaming but soon enough it was. The most popular application on the site based on daily active users is Pet Society and overall, a large percentage of the top 100 applications on Facebook are games. If you are on Facebook, there’s a good chance that you have played a game in the past month and many more are playing daily.

4. Advertise Your Business

While Facebook’s advertising platform is still in its infancy, many businesses are taking advantage of the site’s ability to efficiently target users based on specific demographic information. Many of the advertising opportunities are still being explored including “nanotargeting” which is the ability to target a single user via a Facebook advertisement.

5. Monitor Your Children

The fastest growing demographic on Facebook over the past few months has easily been parents, more specifically: mothers. Facebook can be a parent’s dream come true. While the site can occasionally provide parents with more information than they ever wanted, Facebook can also be used to increase communication between parents and their children.

6. Meet Other People

While Facebook is supposed to be for connecting with those that you’ve meant offline, the launch of the Facebook platform brought about a number of applications which have served as powerful tools for connecting previously unconnected users. Some of these applications are for meeting fellow singles to date while others are for connecting within virtual communities. However you are connecting with others, Facebook is rapidly spawning millions of new relationships.

7. Create An Application

While everybody isn’t a developer, Facebook has been extremely effective at attracting new developer talent to build applications on top of the Facebook platform. Facebook initiated the movement toward a more open social web with the launch of their platform two years ago, and they are continuing that movement today. The result has been numerous applications which now are legitimate businesses for hundreds if not thousands of developers.

Many more developers have attempted to build powerful applications on top of the Facebook platform, and despite their failure to attract a mass following, the opportunity provided to developers is frequently too good to pass up.

8. Check Tagged Photos

Embarrassing photos have become a permanent fixture in the media when referencing Facebook. Thanks to the large amount of buzz resulting from articles about individuals being fired and relationships ending due to inappropriate or compromising photos, millions of users log in soon after they are alerted to a newly tagged photo of themselves.

9. Reply to Messages

Facebook is a communication platform and messages are a central component of that communication. Every time we receive a message, an email arrives in our inbox to notify us of that message. Many users (including myself) have complained about the lack of features within Facebook’s messaging system. Despite its downfalls, Facebook messages are one of the most important features of the site.

With the growth in mobile Facebook usage, Facebook’s messaging system has witnessed continued growth and we can only assume that this growth will continue for the foreseeable future.

10. Search For Old Friends and Ex-Lovers

Often times we log in to Facebook just to find a person we happen to be thinking of at that moment. It can be an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend, as well as a childhood friend, or even a distant relative. Whoever you are thinking about, you can log in to Facebook and search for that person. More often, that person now has a profile on Facebook. You can find most people that you’re looking for on the site and that’s why millions of people are logging in every day.

11. Chat With Others

Facebook chat only launched recently but every day that I log in, I end up getting tons of messages (as long as I’m not invisible). From other people that I’ve spoken to, chat has become an increasingly active component of their Facebook usage. As I said before, Facebook is a communication platform and chat is now an integral component of communication on the site.

12. Update Your Status

Status has been an important component of Facebook since early on and with the increasing popularity of Twitter, status is becoming even more important. Users don’t actually need to visit the site to update their status though. Many use their mobile phones to update their status and then wait for the comments to flow in. Status updates were created by Facebook and are now becoming an integral component of general communication on the web.

13. Take A Break

In the world of the cubicle workplace, we often are seeking for ways to take a break from performing the task at hand. According to some statistics Facebook has single handedly resulted in an overall decrease in domestic productivity as well as abroad. Regardless of the productivity impact, it’s clear that workers are using Facebook during their downtimes and any time they wish to take a break.

14. Converse With Customers

More important than how you are wasting time is how you are making money and Facebook is a great platform for doing that. Through Facebook Pages, brands have the opportunity to interact directly with their customers, engaging them in a two-way dialogue. I believe that over the next few weeks and months we will see a surge in Facebook Pages adoption as new services arrive to make it easier to build a presence. This is just one of the many reasons users log in to Facebook!

15. Figure Out Your Event Schedule

If you have a lot of friends on Facebook then you probably have a lot of event invites. Whether or not you are attending them, Facebook has become a central location for finding out what events or taking place on any given day. One of the main reasons we log in to the site daily is to figure out what’s going on and what events our friends are going to. If you are on Facebook, then you are most likely creating and RSVPing to events.

16. Create Buzz

Guerilla social media marketers (or whatever you want to call them) have a heavy presence on Facebook and are actively trying to figure out new ways to increase their reach through the site. Whether it’s finding more friends, posting more status updates, creating fan pages, purchasing ads, setting up events, tagging users in photos, or anything else, many users perform certain activities for the sole purpose of generating buzz.

17. Participate or Create Groups

Groups are the central place for organizing large numbers of users together around a single purpose on Facebook. Many times groups will surge beyond thousands of users and suddenly there are ongoing conversations that are formed. Users that participate in these conversations return regularly to talk with other users about the topic being discussed in that group.

18. Approve New Friend Requests

Adding friends is one of the most important parts of the Facebook experience. The average user has somewhere around 150 to 200 friends and logs in every time they receive a new friend requests. Without friends on Facebook, the experience would be a pretty poor one which is why the company attempts to suggest new friends as soon as users register, increasing the likelihood that they’ll become an active user.

19. To Check Application Requests And Notifications

When the Facebook platform first launched almost two years ago, application requests began flooding in. The primary reason behind this flood of requests was that there were no limitations on how many applications could send. Despite the eventual limitations that were enforced, application requests and notifications continue to fill up within users’ “request” area. Cleaning out your requests is a good reason to log in every day.

20. Check Birthdays and Send Gifts

Facebook has become a central location for checking up on our friends’ birthdays. Rather than storing birthdays in your calendar, you can simply log in to Facebook and check out who’s birthday it is. You can then be one of the hundreds of people to post “Happy Birthday!” on their wall. To stand out from the rest, you can even send them a gift. Birthdays continue to be one of the most important reasons people log in to Facebook everyday.

So what was the reason that you logged in to Facebook today?

 
What is facebook retargeting?
Facebook retargeting simply means the act of re-engaging customers and visitors who have one time or the other visited your website without buying from you, with highly targeted facebook ads. These facebook ads are usually based on their recent interaction with your service or product.

Obviously, some of your visitors buy on their first visit to your site, but they are very insignificant, about 2% to 3%. Where are other 97%? I quite agree that your squeeze pages might attract some leads and you can get like 35% to %40 from them through email marketing, but you are still leaving so much money on the table.


And one obvious behavioural fact about visitors is that the people buy after several contacts to offers, so it will be very prosperous to adopt Facebook retargeting to get these people back to your offers.

1. You don’t much time to convince your customers, so you have to be creative.

You have to observe what makes your audience unique and different from others so that you can retarget them intelligently. Creating customized ads according to the behavior of your audience and offering your products based on the interest of your visitors is one great way to retarget them to your offers.

     2. Put a call to action on your offer page
Inserting a call to action on your offer page is one outstanding way of converting your visitors to buyers. Choose words that will push them to click on your offers. Words like ‘read more’, ‘click here’, are great words that create curiosity in visitors to click on your Facebook retargeting links.

    3.  Segment your Audience
This can be done by creating customized ads for your website visitors while they are on different pages of your website. Relevant ads are very important for the success of your retargeting campaign. Visitors must only see ads that are relevant to them. This you can do by placing different Facebook retargeting pixels on different pages. This will help you to deliver more engaging ads which suits the interests of your users.

4.  Reduce your ad impressions:
One thing that annoys followers including me is seeing ads re-occurring too much. You need to put a limit to your Facebook retargeting campaigns that control where and how your ads are to be displayed.

 5.  Put your Facebook retargeting in regular test:
Never set your campaign and go to sleep. You can only get the best results by testing each and every campaign you create. These testing will help you to monitor your visits and conversions. From this, you know what works and what does not in your campaign. This will greatly help you in creating highly targeted ads, increase your conversions and increase your brand exposure.

  6. Conversion optimization
One reason why Facebook is an outstanding platform for retargeting is that it has several tools which automatically optimize campaigns. These tools automatically send your ads to your potential audience.

 7.  Analyze Behaviours
Facebook retargeting gives you the ability to create campaigns based on behaviours of your visitors. This is an opportunity to understand and analyze the way your customers behave. This will also help you to know the amount of time spent by your visitors on your website and the source of your traffic. This will subsequently help you to deliver relevant ads to your visitors.

 8. Test all ad formats to know what works best for you.
Facebook has several ads formats and sizes. We have Desktop ad 470×246, permalinks 470×246, mobile ad 560x 292 and sidebar ad 254×133.Not only that, there are video ads, page post like ads, mobile app ads and so on. To know which of these ads format and sizes work best for you, you need to put them to use and observe how they convert. Once you are able to know what works best, you should make use of all valid sizes of such so you can maximize it to reach your customers.

 9. Keep your bidding High
Try to keep your bidding rate high in other to put your ads in the desired position especially right in the front of your customers.

10. Create Multiple Facebook retargeting Campaigns:
This is especially for someone who has more than one service to render or more than one product to offer. Creating a campaign for all your product and services will not give you the desired result. What you need is to create multiple campaigns to attract your potential customers based on their interests. Each of your campaigns should be assigned to a particular service or business. This will greatly help you to understand and track your conversions.

 
How do I use Facebook to enhance my company, church, organization, or club?
As a person who utilizes Facebook in the repetoir of how I make my living, I get this question a lot. With hundreds of millions of Facebook users out there, and huge growth in the adult demographic, it makes sense for people to shift marketing efforts to Facebook. The trick is doing it without looking like an idiot.

What do you recommend? Here are my  5 things with Facebook. It’ll be the best marketing you can do in the next 1 hour, trust me. Just like anything else… nail the basics and everything else is just gravy.

Preamble: You need a page, not a group. If you only have a group right now… go create a page. Facebook is not investing in making the group experience better. All of their efforts for businesses are focused on pages.

1. Secure your URL. Once your page has 100 fans, you can go to facebook.com/username and secure a unique URL. This will help you on a lot of fronts. First, it’s easy to remember. Tell people, “Like our product? Become a fan on Facebook at Facebook.com/yourcompany.” I’m seeing this everywhere! I was at a golf course a couple weeks back that had a fan page. Hotels have it. Designers have it. Even dive bars have fan pages. Second, this helps your company on the Google front as well. It’ll make it easier for people looking for you and your products to find you… not your competitor. If you are a company that has brands/products it’s a good idea to also add a fan page for your top products.

2. Add FBML. With the page application FBML, you’ll be able to build a landing page for your fans. Here’s an example of mine from Youth Specialties. Here’s another one from Coke. FBML allows you to design HTML code and drop it into your page as a tab. Then in the page settings you can select which tab is the default landing page. With both the Coke and YS pages you see that it introduces the brand and products pretty strongly, right away. If you aren’t a web guru, I’d still add FBML and have your web designer pimp it out. (Or send me $500 and I’ll do it for you.)

3. Embed video or audio. Up until recently, Facebook has not allowed applications like FBML to embed stuff. It basically stripped out <embed> and <script> tags in the coding. But if your brand has some great audio/video that you think could help you sell your products, here’s a little hack.
Bear in mind you need to host these files on your own host, but that’s cheap and easy enough.

For video, you can embed FLV files using this code: <fb:flv src="Flash_Video_URL" height="###" width="###"/>

For audio, you can embed MP3 files using this code: <fb:mp3 src="URL HERE" height="###" width="###" artist="artist" title="title" album="picture"/>
That may not be a beginners option, but if you can pull it off it looks fantastic!

4. Connect your company website/blog to your Facebook page. If your website was designed in the last 3-4 years it probably has RSS feeds. It’s simple and easy to import an RSS feed from your website onto your page. Here’s the link.

5. Add your Facebook page Fan Box to your company website or blog. Complete the circle. You are sending your content to Facebook, allow your customers to see your precense on Facebook from your website.

That’s it. Those are the basics. Nail those 5 things down and you are off to a good start. In fact, I wouldn’t add much else to a Facebook page. Just make sure to update your status from time to time.

We all know the money is in the list but not all of us are great at list building or email marketing. luckily for you and I, Facebook has made that easier.
No longer do you need to create pretty call-to-actions or provide a high quality lead magnet to get a prospect’s details, Facebook has streamlined the process and made it foolproof.
What I am I talking about?

Facebook custom audiences

Okay, first of all, you can’t build an email list on Facebook (well not yet anyway).
I’m talking about Facebook custom audiences. In a nutshell, it allows you to place a tracking cookie on your website, and when a visitor who has a Facebook user profile visits your website, they are tracked stored for up to 180 days in a list.
Let’s assume your website receives 100 views per day and 70% of visitors have a Facebook user profile. Within a 180 day period you will have a custom audience size of 12,600 people.
These are 12,600 people who have previously visited your website and have some sort of interest in your product or service. Using this list you can create highly targeted adverts that are seen only by the people in your list.
I have a custom audience pixel on my website and have more than 180,000 prospects who I can display adverts to:

Custom audiences do more than just collect data, but I’ll get to that later in this article.

Retargeting through Facebook is the new list building

I’m only joking about the headline (I don’t want email marketers slating me), but it’s a great alternative.
If you’ve ever ran adverts on Facebook before, I will assume that most ads targeted new prospects and don’t provide a scalable ROI. Showing an advert to someone who is unaware of your website is always going to be a tough sell. They don’t know who you’re, there is no social proofing and there may be a good chance they have zero interest in what you’re offering.
The result? Higher ad spend and poor conversion rates.
But when you show adverts to people who have visited your website in the past, there is an element of social proofing, they do know who you’re and they are interested in what you’re selling (or saying). 46% of marketers say that retargeting is one of the most underused marketing methods today with retargeted ads having a 70% success rate of increasing conversions over regular ads.
But that’s not even the most compelling statistics (for anyone running an online store), it’s estimated that over 67% of consumers abandon their online shopping carts, that’s a lot of people who had the intent to buy but ended up leaving.
Now what if you could target the 67% of people to go back to their carts and checkout? You can.

How does it work

Custom audiences collect data of everyone who visits your website who has a Facebook profile. If you place the tracking code in the header or footer of your website, it will track every who visits your website. If you place it in a the body of a specific page (landing or product page), it will only collect data from people who visited that specific page.
For example, prospects who land on your thank you page after taking your lead magnet are tracked, put into a list and ready for you to advertise your next offer. You can track the following:

You’re only allowed to have one custom audience per Facebook account, and creating more Facebook accounts to add more on your website will get you banned. Each custom audience lets you track prospects for 1-180 days. If your website doesn’t get a lot of traffic opting for a longer time period is fine. For sites that receive thousands of visits per day, keep the tracking length shorter, as people who recently interacted with your website are ‘fresher’ and more likely to convert.

Summary

Facebook is one of the world’s biggest brands and the opportunities for marketers and businesses is endless. I myself have created so many ads on the fly through the Facebook Adverts Manager, targeting new prospects and I’m usually left scratching my head wondering why nobody has taken my offers. Then I started using custom audiences and my conversions went through the roof.
Using a custom audience to build a targeted Facebook list will provide you with cheaper ad spend and give a much better ROI. Have you used a a  custom audience before? What are your thoughts?

Driving large amounts of free targeted traffic to your website is pretty hard nowadays without spending money.
Not many people know about Facebook Groups, or if they do they don’t know the untapped potential they have to generate free targeted traffic to your site.
Every generic ‘drive traffic to your site using these X methods’ article will at some point list forums. They will generally offer some recycled advice about leaving a URL in your signature to drive traffic or answer questions to add value.
No doubt you have tried this and got less than satisfactory results.
In this article I will show you two ways to generate hundreds if not thousands of targeted views daily using Facebook Groups and online forums that aren’t even in your niche.

Facebook Groups

On the top of Facebook you have a search bar where it gives you the option to search for people, pages, places, events, apps and groups.
Let’s assume I run a niche site that affiliates various products aimed at backpackers who visit Australia. Using the Facebook search type I type in “Backpacker Australia” and select the result type ‘Groups’.



Just on the first page I have found two highly targeted groups that contain 22,522 members and another one with over 11,376 members. These are basically fish in a barrel waiting to be shot at.
That’s a lot of people.

What’s next?

I first join all the groups with my Facebook account. A lot of groups will be shown as ‘private’, all this means is the admin must approve you before you can join. Depending on the activity of the group it will take less than 24 hours.
My next step is to drop URL links to my site by answering peoples’ questions. People use these groups to ask questions about which blogs to read, hotels to stay in or things to buy for their trip.



For the example above I would provide a legitimate response on the best hostels in Bryon Bay. With it I would link back to my site which reviews the best hotels and hostels in Australia for backpackers.
I can’t answer every question with a link back to my site because people will quickly find out what I am doing and ban me from the group forever. This is not what I want because a group with 22,522 members is a goldmine, and I want me some gold.
I usually use the 80/20 rule with Facebook Groups.
This means 80% of my interaction in the group is in-depth practical advice that makes me come across as an authority on the subject and someone who can be trusted. The other 20% of comments I do the same but place links back to my site.
Whether you sell supplements, clothing or gadgets, there is a Facebook Group for almost every niche that you can join to drive free targeted traffic.

 How to make use of forums not in your niche

Every major forum has an off-topic section where users can discuss other topics outside their niche. Take TwoPlusTwo which is the biggest poker forum in the world.
Outside all their poker related categories they have sections on health, travel, computer help, sporting events and even wrestling. The travel section alone has 4,980 threads and over 168,836 posts.
While sites like TripAdvisor don’t allow you to promote your travel site on their forum, most other forums simply won’t care (assuming you don’t spam).
One of my websites is a popular travel site about travelling in Thailand and guess what? There’s a dedicated thread talking about Thailand on TwoPlusTwo which has 52,157 posts and over 3.4 million views!



I need to get me a piece of that pie.

What’s next?

I decided to make a comprehensive post about everything people need to know who are coming to Thailand for the first time. Where to stay, breakdown on cities, the best bars and clubs in the area and how to get around the country.
But that’s not all, when I did create my post I linked several websites including my own.
Forum members can be hard people to impress and if you straight up spam without providing value they will call you out for spamming and you will get banned. But by providing a super detailed post that addresses the needs of many readers, after only a few posts I had established myself as a person of knowledge and trust.
Not only did this get me targeted traffic but all newbies visiting Thailand are redirected to my thread post when asking several questions to use as a ‘start here’ guide.
There are hundreds of forums that have millions of active members with very active off-topic sections in your niche. They all contain thousands of prospects waiting for you to solve their problem

Summary

The key to using Facebook Groups and forums successfully is how you’re perceived by others. If your posts come across as a snake oil salesman then you will end up getting banned, some sites will even permanently block your website URL which is not good for business.
I only stick to a couple of larger forums because I don’t have the time to post on everyone. If you took advantage of several forums that have a huge user base – who needs SEO?
Let me know how you got on with these methods by leaving a comment below.

Like Twitter, Facebook is just one of the many ways to get some traffic to your site. Many marketers believe that it is just a matter of time for the traffic from Facebook, Twitter and the other major social networking sites to surpass the traffic their sites get from Google. 

While this time might come, don't take this as a promise that even if you do everything right, Facebook, Twitter, or any other similar site will do traffic miracles for you. For some people Facebook works like a charm, for others it doesn't work at all. The same applies to Twitter. You can't know in advance if Facebook and/or Twitter will crash your server with traffic. Just try both and see which one (if any) works for you.

Unlike Twitter, which is very simplistic, Facebook offers more possibilities. Yes, you might need more time in order to explore all the possibilities and take advantage of them but hopefully these efforts will have a great return in terms of traffic. Here are some tips that can help you turn Facebook into a traffic monster:

1. Your profile is your major weapon

As with Twitter and any other social network, if you don't make your profile interesting, you will hardly become popular. Give enough background information for you and don't forget to make your profile public because this way even people, who don't know you, when they encounter your profile, they might become interested in you and become a supporter of yours.

2. Include information about your site on your Wall and in the photo gallery

Facebook gives you the opportunity to write a lot about you and your endeavors, as well as to include pictures, so use all these opportunities to build interest in you and your products. It is even better to post videos and fill in the other tabs, so if you have something meaningful to put there, just do it.

3. Build your network

As with other social networking sites, your network is your major capital. That is why you need to invite your friends, acquaintances, and partners and ask them to join as your supporter. You should also search for people with interests similar to yours. However, don't be pushy and don't spam because this is not the way to convince people to join your network.

4. Post regularly

No matter how interesting the stuff in your Facebook profile is, if you don't publish new content regularly, the traffic to your Facebook profile (and respectively the Facebook traffic to your site) will slow down. If you can post daily, it is fine but even if you don't post that regularly, try to do it as frequently as you can. If nothing else, updating your status regularly is more than nothing, so do it.

5. Be active

A great profile, an impressive network, and posting regularly are just a part of the recipe for success on Facebook. You also need to be active – visit the profiles of your supporters, take part in their groups and other initiatives, visit their sites. You are right that all this takes a lot of time and you might soon discover that Facebooking is a full-time occupation but if you notice an increase in traffic to your site, then all this is worth.

6. Arrange your page

Unlike other social networks, Facebook gives you more flexibility and you can move around many of the boxes. If you put the RSS feed with the links to your blog in a visible space, this alone can generate lots of traffic for you.

7. Check what Facebook apps are available

Facebook apps are numerous and new and new ones are released all the time. While many of these apps are not exactly what you need, there are apps, which can work for you in a great way. For instance, MarketPlace widget/plugin or Blog Friends widget are very useful and you should take advantage of them. You can also use the widgets for crossposting (i.e. posting directly on Twitter from Facebook) because this saves you time.

8. Use Facebook Social Ads

If you can't get traffic the natural way, you might consider using Facebook Social ads. These are PPC ads and starting a campaign is similar to an Adwords campaign.

9. Start a group

There are many groups on Facebook but it is quite probable that there is a free niche for you. Start a group about something related to your business and invite people to join it. The advantage of this approach is that you are getting targeted users – i.e. people, who are interested in you, your product, your ideas, etc.

10. Write your own Facebook extensions

While this step is certainly not for everybody, if you can write Facebook extensions, this is one more way to make your Facebook profile popular and get some traffic to your site.

11. Use separate profiles

Unfortunately, social networks do expose a lot of personal information and you are not paranoid, if you don't want so much publicity. Many people are rightfully worried about their privacy on social network sites and that is why it is not uncommon to have one personal profile for friends and one business profile to promote their business. You can have one single profile for both purposes, but if you have privacy concerns, consider separating this profile in two – you'd better be safe than sorry. 

We've all heard that old adage about how "less is more" right?  When it comes to business Facebook posts, there's a lesson to be learned.  In this article we'll explore some of the key reasons to keep your social media posts short, direct and effective, while making them as interesting and personally engaging as possible.

One of the most common mistakes businesses make when posting to Facebook, is trying to tell complex stories to an audience that is pressed for time.  Moreover, many companies and organizations forget that they're not the only posts being read.  On any given day, your Facebook fans are subjected to dozens upon dozens of promotional posts.  And despite how important you feel your message is, it's wise to see things from their perspective.


Be Direct and Avoid Fluff
While it's tempting to write a clever into paragraph to your post, it could also be costly.  It's easy to lose the interest of your audience, especially on Facebook, if you get too wordy or verbose in your daily postings.  Instead, take a more direct approach.  If you're offering a sale or special promo, be sure to mention it in the opening line.  If you're having an event, make mention of the details and dates right away.  This will appeal to their realistic interests without losing them in pointless verbiage.

Over-posting can Be Detrimental
There are scores of companies out there who have a strict policy on the frequency of their Facebook business posts.  Some post daily like clockwork, others post every three to four hours.  And while yes, consistency is noble, it's more important to know when to give your fans a break.  If you're constantly posting things they have little interest in, they may end up overlooking the promotions that are most appealing, or un-liking you altogether.  Study your audience and learn what pattern of frequency they respond most favorably to. Depending on your industry, if your a Roofing company, don't post daily, that will cause more people to hide and unlike your page... roofing is not fun! if you have a news website, posting multiple times per day is more natural to do.

Don't Overlook the Power of Hashtags #
Using hashtags (#) is one of the most effective, trending and addictively popular ways to get others engaged in topics that you've covered in your Facebook post. Interestingly enough, they're also one of the most commonly misunderstood and misused. As a rule of thumb, make sure that your hashtags are directly related to the core topic you're discussing, and be sure to write them out as one word.

If the New York Yankees made a post about Derek Jeter and hashtagged #Derek and you made a post with the hashtag #Derek, when someone clicks the #hashtag from the New York Yankees post, your post has a chance of displaying because of the common hashtag. Think of a hashtag like a keyword, just don't spam them.