With the onset of social media advertising and marketing, anyone can put out their own videos or promotional material round-the-clock. Contrary to the lofty price range in advertising through mainstream media, bringing it online saves people a lot of time and money.

Big ventures such as real estate are also not missing the practicality of this method. It’s exactly why we see a lot of prominent companies now using various social media platforms to promote awareness. One of the most popular avenues is through Facebook.

With its billions of users from all over the world, it’s no longer a surprise why digital marketers love bringing their strategies to this arena.

Why video?

There various types of post you can make on Facebook. One can go for plain text, images and even infographics. However, among these types of content, videos are considered to be among the most effective material in reaching people.

Compared to photos, which are known to be better than plain text, videos has an estimated 135% of organic reach. So just imagine how many people around the web could see your promotion once they open the platform.

Moreover, videos are also more dynamic. You can add animation and effects to highlight the best features of a real estate property and the like. Viewers have the tendency to get more attracted to items that move rather than looking at something static.

‘Go Live’ option

For marketers, being timely is a must. Facebook seem to know this as they launched the platform’s ‘Go Live’ feature that allows page or account owners to show live coverage of just about anything.

Let’s say for example you want to cover a ground breaking event for a recent property the company wants to sell.  Rather than simply creating a customized image of the area, you can take the extra step and let people know about the event by allowing them to stream it through Facebook!

Opportunity to create featured video list

Naturally, there are certain properties you wish to promote better. This could be a new condominium, an apartment and even a vacant lot at a very good location. You can create short videos for each and have them stored on your Facebook playlist.

This way, any people who are interested to view your other offers could simply click on it from the left side and watch the property’s featured highlights.

 Facebook Insight feature

In traditional marketing, assessing the efficiency of a strategy may require one to conduct hands-on and field surveys to see if it generated the response they hope for from their market.

With the Facebook Insight feature, digital marketers could automatically see the results of their campaigns. It measures the amount of interaction in the form of likes, comments and shares. Using this data, marketers will no longer have to spend too much time making their evaluation and can immediately proceed with the next campaign they wish to run.

While traditional means of advertising is still widely used, we cannot set aside the fact that Facebook has now changed the landscape of the entire marketing industry as a whole. It’s power as an advertising tool is so strong and widespread that professionals working on promoting a product just have to embrace it.

Digitalization has changed and improved the means by which the real estate industry could reach its market. Don’t miss out the benefits that a typical 30 to 90-second video can do to promote your home.

Create a compelling story using videos!

The post Facebook Marketing: Using Video to Sell a Home appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

Let’s examine the changes and how small-scale businesses may triumph over them.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg discusses News Feed changes

Facebook marketing changes in 2015

Based on a survey conducted by Facebook itself, it discovered that people don’t want to see promotional contents on their News Feed. Examples of these are:

1. Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
2. Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
3. Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Facebook also figured that these posts are not actually ads but are posts made through Facebook pages. The social media giant decided to take more control over the volume and content on Facebook pages that users deem as promotional posts.

As it is, News Feed is already a competitive place. That’s according to Facebook. Standing out means making your Facebook pages more interesting and engaging than treating as merely a publishing platform where you can post anything you want albeit being overly promotional.

What does this mean for small businesses?

Evidently, the changes don’t necessarily mean to abandon your Facebook pages. Quite the contrary. After all, your Facebook page is still an important free marketing platform that you can utilize considering its reach and impact. In addition, Facebook will increase its investment on such feature considering the almost 1 billion Facebook pages visit in October 2014 alone. So, there is no need to change platforms.

If you are still approaching your Facebook page as a marketing platform, perhaps, you should rethink what Facebook is in the first place. It is a social networking site. Now is the perfect time to rethink the contents you post on your Facebook page. Meaning, you need to publish content that encourages interaction and conversation.

If you haven’t had a solid content strategy, create one now, but this will require a Facebook marketing expert. The changes would have minimal effects if you are already publishing shareable and engaging contents on your Facebook page. Then, just direct the users to your other channels (website, blog, landing page, etc.) via these contents. But, be discreet about it and use the proper link formats.

Let’s say you have a marketing budget. If you still want to publish promotional contents on Facebook, better pay for that privilege. With these changes that already took effect, regaining organic distribution means getting the same engagement level from the users and communities for a fee. But that’s another story that deserves an article of its own.

What can you do as a small business?

Donné Torr of HootSuite offers some practical tips for small business with no or limited budget to spend on Facebook advertising.

• Evaluate your current Facebook marketing strategy
• Create Facebook-worthy contents or contents that provide value
• Run a test to determine which posts are engaging and which are not
• Cross-promote contents published on other platforms on Facebook
• Organize Facebook posts by using social media content calendar

Furthermore, Socially Stacked offers more specific suggestions with or without Facebook.

• Use email marketing in promoting your milestones and latest products
• Host promos and other campaigns on your website itself
• Place ads on your website and blogs
• Try encouraging your community to use Facebook’s share features

In 2015, when it comes to digital marketing which is not getting any easier, it is not only Google that we have to please. We also have to please Facebook. These changes are NOT negative changes, however. Think of the change as an opportunity of making your Facebook page a better place as well by refraining from publishing posts that are too promotional, thereby aligning your business goals with that of Facebook.

Image credit: MStarz.com

The post 2015 Facebook Marketing Changes and Their Impact on Small Businesses appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

The truth according to Facebook

Facebook claims that the changes in news feed wherein a very few targeted feeds are supplied to the account owner, for instance, is not implemented for the purpose of boosting revenue. Instead, it aims to make the experience as pleasant as possible. Facebook can share more than 1,500 stories to any user upon logging in, all of which can be consumed in one whole day. The news feeds that we see today are the best stories there is, according to Facebook.

If you want your branded post to be shown to the right audience, then you must pay Facebook to consider your posts as one of the best stories. No matter what the argument is, it all boils down to paying Facebook so the branded free post will be shown to your target market.

How the small businesses see it

Small businesses regarded Facebook as a free platform because these businesses can manipulate Facebook in the way an individual user does. Today, there are more than 30 million small businesses with active pages and 19 million on mobile. The steps taken by these businesses are modest including creating a Facebook page which is basically for businesses, updating status, uploading product images, offers and discounts, etc. There is nothing completely wrong with this.

Facebook has more than 1.3 billion active users with 829 million active users monthly and 654 million active users on mobile monthly. For any small business, these figures are huge! Hence, you cannot blame them if they get upset with the current situation. One brand even broke up with the social giant publicly, saying that Facebook now sucks for brands.

The points of view of the experts, on the other hand, are completely different. Facebook, while it is provided free for the users, is a business entity whose main job is returning value to its shareholder. Generating revenue is the first agenda, so advertising your business for free in Facebook is essentially non-existent.

The only premise is that if you want to target the right customers at the right time using the right posts, then pay Facebook to do it for you. That is, if your marketing budget allows. Since we are talking about small businesses, we cannot expect a high budget percentage. In fact, some small businesses have no marketing budget at all! When they had, it is not even 1% of the marketing budget of the big companies.

Not so fast…

The good thing is Facebook also offered a few tips so the small businesses can still appear on the best stories list at a minimal cost. If you still want to do Facebook without spending a penny, then stop at #4.

1) Timing is key. If you are a pizza parlor owner, make sure that you post an offer during Fridays, 4pm and not during Sundays, 6am.

2) Post relevantly. Of course, as a pizza parlor owner, you wouldn’t want to publish anything about violence, wars, etc. or anything that will cause to lose the users’ appetite.

3) Post regularly. Again, pizza parlor owners must not post craps that only annoy the followers. READ: Don’t flood the feed with almost-the-same contents.

4) Post images and videos. Make the pizza come alive! Images are ideal for engagement.

5) Try Facebook Offer. If your page has more than 50 likes, you are allowed to create an offer. You are the one to set a lifetime budget for your pizza offer (buy 2, get 1).

6) Boost important posts. Create a post and make sure more people will get to see the post. Targeting features are available wherein you can target the people in your vicinity where your pizza business operates.

While the developments are blatantly discouraging for the small businesses, this does not mean removing Facebook from your social media marketing strategy. Facebook remains to be a good venue to interact with your customers and prospects. After all, it is primarily a social site.

Source: Business Week | Groovv.com

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The situation leading to the update

Reaching people at the mobile device level has a solid foundation. According to Facebook, mobile app developers had already witnessed immense success with the social giant’s mobile app ads. The main reason? Facebook is highly capable of targeting mobile app ads precisely. Facebook even reasons high quality installs and engagements are only possible through “reaching the right people with the most relevant messages.”

This leads to enhancing the mobile targeting services specifically for app developers. Any developer would be able to reach mobile device users based on the specific device they use. Apart from the platform, that is iOS and Android, it is now possible to target based on device such as Apple, Samsung and HTC whether the use is on Wi-Fi or not. This was not possible before since mobile targets are limited on either Android or iOS and minimum OS versions and Wi-Fi-only users.

Benefits of mobile app ad device targeting

Along with the announcement, Facebook listed some of the benefits of the new feature.

1) Generating app insights at the device level

Facebook allows the developers to identify which devices will work best for the app through its App Insights, so the developers may target these devices. If the app is specifically made for iPhone 5S, it will be possible to target only those iPhone 5S users.

2) Eliminating wasted app marketing spend

Facebook also allows for filtering out the devices that are no longer compatible with the app, reaching optimal device-app balance. This also means reducing development time since the developer only needs to build apps to devices which they think best suit the app.

3) Gaining greater return on investment (ROI)

Facebook made it in such a way developers may reach the most number of relevant users. These are the people who can find the app and appreciate the compatibility of the app to the device they currently use. Facebook optimizes bids since developers and app marketers may bid per device separately.

The article dares to add another benefit which is creating more device-targeted apps. Not all developers make apps to market and sell them through Facebook. Given the opportunity though, developers may slightly reverse the development process by deciding which device to target first prior to developing a mobile app. This means you can only target the app development based on the most number of Facebook users who own such device. Device selection will be a fundamental part of the process.

Some restraints according to Facebook

Facebook goes on to caution, however, that the developers should not go too narrow with their audience. For instance, they can choose to develop mobile apps suitable for all iPhone users regardless of the device model they are using now. Facebook provides an option to target all iPhones and all iPads, for instance. In-depth understanding of Facebook’s mobile device targeting option is a must therefore.

When marketing the mobile app on Facebook, the developers should also customize the ad in a manner that it will resonate with the target audience. For example, Facebook mentions there is no need to create an ad for all devices. Bundling the group is possible. Also, the rule of thumb is targeting an estimated size of 500,000 users at best for an ad.

In sum, Facebook is giving all developers worldwide an opportunity to create mobile apps that device users will find value in. Such an opportunity also creates several benefits that highlight obtaining greater returns. Developing an app is no joke, and unless you cannot recuperate the investment (other than creating it for fun) in developing one, it is pointless to create an app in the first place. Grab the opportunity!

Source: Facebook | Search Engine Journal | Simon Blog | Be Tuned Solutions

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