This is part 3 of 4 in a DrivingSales series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

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We’ve taken a look at the safe approach to setting Facebook goals. Now, it’s time to discuss letting the tiger out. Let’s sharpen our claws, stretch our muscles, and prepare for battle. Getting aggressive on Facebook is about going to social media war.

Keep in mind that the majority of businesses should stay with the safe goals rather than getting aggressive. They can be extremely effective for maintaining a viable Facebook presence without spending too much time on strategy, planning posts, and creating dialogues on Facebook. If you are going to set aggressive goals, your strategies are going to take time and money to make them happen.

It’s not for everyone but it might be for you. Here are some examples of aggressive Facebook goals.

Goal: Drive Traffic to the Website

This is one of the first things that come to mind when thinking of goals for Facebook. Most realize that it is known as a good traffic generation tool in general and they believe they’ll be able to do the same for their site.

Unfortunately, the standard practices used to drive traffic “in general” do not apply to most business websites. “In general”, Facebook is good at driving traffic to viral content. People do not go to Facebook to find links to inventory items. They go there to see pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base. They can get swayed into clicking on links with controversial titles or intriguing thumbnails, but again that’s not normally something associated with sites that are designed to generate leads or sales.

The only way to drive traffic to your website is by starting with strong content on the website itself. We’ve discussed using your website as your content hub and why it’s so important to have the type of content on your website for both social and search purposes that resonates with your overall target audience. Now, you’ll have to really apply these principles to make this Facebook goal achievable.

The starting point with a goal like this is to sculpt the appropriate fans. This cannot be stressed enough. If you have too few total fans or too many low-quality fans, you’ll want to fix that first before trying to drive traffic to you website. In many ways, driving traffic to your website from Facebook is about establishing trust within your community by posting only the absolute best content possible. Anything short of amazing simply won’t do.

Once you have that trust established by posting images and text that resonate and generate interactions, you can start posting quality content from your website directly to Facebook. If you’re a Dodge dealer, you could post a story like “The 5 Most Searched Dodge Chargers in History“. Assuming that your fans are strong, this will be the type of content that exceeds their expectations when they liked your page in the first place.

It’s supremely important to remember that this type of content must be promoted through Facebook ads. Even the most prolific Facebook pages by the most loved brands are not getting the type of traffic they could get from Facebook when they don’t advertise. Thankfully, if your fans are high-quality and you have a history of posting high value content on your pages, you won’t have to spend a ton to get a good amount of traffic. It’s not targeted traffic – visitors to the site may or may not be looking for a Dodge Charger at the time – so this strategy is best applied if you have retargeting campaigns working or if you’re using Facebook to help drive traffic for social signals purposes to help with SEO.

This is not, however, a way to generate a ton of leads or sales. We’ll discuss that goal shortly.

Goal: Dramatically Improve the Brand Footprint

Facebook may be a challenging venue through which to drive leads and sales via website traffic, but it’s the ultimate venue through which to improve your brand footprint. This goal is arguably the easiest to achieve of the aggressive goals but there’s a very time-consuming set of strategies behind it to make it truly successful.

With this goal, you’re trying to get your name and logo in front of as many prospect eyeballs as possible and as often as possible. To do this, you can employ a handful of different strategies. One strategy that you should never, ever employ is to take other people’s images and slap your logo on top of it. If you do this, you’re risking a brand disaster. I’m not going to dwell on the reasons behind it. I’ll just implore you to stop immediately if you’re doing it.

What you should be doing is taking pictures at your store. Every picture should be interesting and ever picture should include your logo as part of the image, not added after the fact. If you’re a Dodge dealer, you should be taking great pics of amazing Chrysler vehicles with your logo either in the background on a sign or on the license plate clearly visible.

That’s a very small strategy component if your goal is branding. The bigger and more time-consuming component is to go out into the Facebook world and start interacting where your potential customers are. That means getting chatty on the local newspaper Facebook page, offering help and support on local charity Facebook pages, talking about how great the BBQ is at Stan’s Restaurant around the corner, etc.

One thing to keep at the top of your mind when doing this – stay sincere and transparent. It isn’t just about getting your company name on the comment or share list. It’s about making an impact with your comments. It’s about helping others because you want to help others and not just to get your company name listed.

People are smart. They can tell when you’re not being sincere. This is why this goal is one of the most time-consuming. It requires a massive amount of genuine activity. It can’t be faked. You can’t skip a few days. If you go this route and your goal is to make your brand stand out ahead of the competition, you must be willing to commit.* * *I’ve been told to try to limit my 1000-word posts and I only made it through the first two aggressive goals before hitting the mark, so tomorrow I’ll discuss the next two aggressive goals: communication hub and foot traffic. Until then, think about what you really want to do with your Facebook page. Stay focused. Stay diligent. Facebook can be a wonderful marketing tool if used properly.

This is part 2 of 4 in a DrivingSales series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

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Setting goals on Facebook is extremely important. As I wrote last night, it’s the root cause of one of the biggest challenges businesses are facing in Facebook marketing: a lack of a proper strategy. If you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t be able to get there very easily.

There are two primary approaches to setting a Facebook strategy that I’ve put in the boring categories of “safe” and “aggressive”. Here, we’re going to go over some of the safe approaches to Facebook that businesses can employ if they want to be truly successful in their goal-oriented strategy. These aren’t my favorites; I’m an aggressive goal-setter. Still, they may be the best way for your business to operate on Facebook.

Goal: PR-Only

Social media has the potential to be an amazing communication tool when done right. It is the best way to have a two-way public relations presence. You can get your messages out and mold the perception of your company’s personality the way you see fit while having an open method through which people can reach you. PR should always be a portion of every Facebook strategy.

There is an option of using it strictly for public relations. This is the easiest way to go. It’s the least productive goal to set, but it’s by far the safest approach and easiest to implement. If your company either does not believe in the value of using Facebook to reach more customers or you don’t have the time to implement an aggressive strategy, the PR-only approach is ideal.

In essence, this goal is to use Facebook sparingly. You aren’t going for visibility. You’re using it for defense only. Growth in the local market isn’t important. You aren’t playing the EdgeRank game nor are you advertising on Facebook at all. With this approach, the only audience that concerns you come from two sources: your website and the search engines.

With the PR-only approach, you play it very safe. You can post sparingly – once or twice a week is plenty (no less than that, though) – and finding content is easy because it doesn’t have to be viral. It technically doesn’t even have to be interesting. It’s an expression of your company’s personality to a limited audience. You can post links to your blog, pictures from the office, industry news, congratulations to employees, customer testimonials, etc.

Because you’re not worried about exposure, you don’t have to worry about getting into your fans’ news feeds. Those who want to get a feel for your company will be able to find it in searches for your name on Google or Bing as well as by clicking on the link that you post on your website and blog. You’re painting a picture with no fears of hurting your affinity and limited worries about getting negative feedback on your posts. Very few people will see it, but those who do have the opportunity to get a good feeling about your company because you’re not taking risks.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, you will not be reaching people with this strategy. You will have a presence for those who want to find you, but there will be no growth, no additional leads or sales, no engagement, and you won’t be popping up in news feeds. The PR-only approach is a way to hide from all of the potential negatives in social media while still maintaining a presence that isn’t embarrassing. It’s as safe as it gets.

Goal: Basic Presence

This is similar to the PR-only approach, but there’s a chance that it can expose the brand to some additional people. Not many. You won’t be saying a lot but you will be interesting enough to get a little love.

If your goal is to have a basic presence, there are several strategies that can work. One of the easiest is to go with the daily industry picture. This strategy is extremely easy and maintains your presence without much effort. You simply schedule an image that’s relevant to your industry once a day, every day. That’s it. A Jeep dealer would post an image of a Jeep once a day. You can’t mess it up.

This goal is not one that will allow for much growth, but the chances of it ever hurting you are limited. Much like the PR-only approach, having a basic presence is designed mostly for those who find you on search or get directed to the Facebook page from you website. Because it’s likely going to be images that are of interest to your visitors, there’s a chance they might like some of them and get you an EdgeRank boost that can push your posts into news feeds.

This is the most common goal for local businesses today. Ironically, it’s the one that many wrongly classify as aggressive since they’re stepping outside of the bounds of pure business needs and trying to entertain their audience. The reason that this classification is wrong is because it’s still much safer than posting messages. Being fun isn’t necessarily aggressive. It can be, but we’ll discuss that type of goal in the next post.

Goal: Be the Industry Resource

Of all the safe goals, this is the one that requires the most effort. You’re trying to share your knowledge within your industry to your fans. Using the Jeep dealer example, they would be posting tips to maintain a 4WD when it’s not used very often, for example.

This goal can be ramped up more than other safe goals because you’re trying to bring value to the table. Facebook ads can work and this goal can help with branding and public perception if you stay consistent with it. In fact, you can get very active and appreciative fans as the industry resource. There’s a chance that you can build some decent EdgeRank and get shared amongst your target audience.

It takes work. Those who are conservative with their goals but want to be aggressive with the implementation of the strategy will be constantly researching to find more resources to either create or share from other sources. It’s an excellent approach if you have a matching blog with tips and best practices.

Those setting this as their goal do not have to post every day. In fact, once or twice a week can work just as it can with the PR-only approach, but never let your page go dormant for longer than a week. If you have to repost something with a slightly different spin in the description, that’s better than missing a week of posts.

* * *

There are other safe goals out there, but for local businesses if you want to play defense and maintain a presence without spending too much effort keeping it up, these are the best ways that we’ve found to work. The social media game is all about ROI, so if your investment is low, the expected returns can be low as well. When playing it safe, you don’t have to be loved or even liked that much. You just have to be present.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over the aggressive goals that are (to me) much more fun but that also encompass more risk. Playing with Facebook from an aggressive posture takes time and effort and there’s a risk that the returns won’t justify the expenditures. However, there’s also a tremendous opportunity to move the needle.

This is part 2 of 4 in a DrivingSales series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

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Setting goals on Facebook is extremely important. As I wrote last night, it’s the root cause of one of the biggest challenges businesses are facing in Facebook marketing: a lack of a proper strategy. If you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t be able to get there very easily.

There are two primary approaches to setting a Facebook strategy that I’ve put in the boring categories of “safe” and “aggressive”. Here, we’re going to go over some of the safe approaches to Facebook that businesses can employ if they want to be truly successful in their goal-oriented strategy. These aren’t my favorites; I’m an aggressive goal-setter. Still, they may be the best way for your business to operate on Facebook.

Goal: PR-Only

Social media has the potential to be an amazing communication tool when done right. It is the best way to have a two-way public relations presence. You can get your messages out and mold the perception of your company’s personality the way you see fit while having an open method through which people can reach you. PR should always be a portion of every Facebook strategy.

There is an option of using it strictly for public relations. This is the easiest way to go. It’s the least productive goal to set, but it’s by far the safest approach and easiest to implement. If your company either does not believe in the value of using Facebook to reach more customers or you don’t have the time to implement an aggressive strategy, the PR-only approach is ideal.

In essence, this goal is to use Facebook sparingly. You aren’t going for visibility. You’re using it for defense only. Growth in the local market isn’t important. You aren’t playing the EdgeRank game nor are you advertising on Facebook at all. With this approach, the only audience that concerns you come from two sources: your website and the search engines.

With the PR-only approach, you play it very safe. You can post sparingly – once or twice a week is plenty (no less than that, though) – and finding content is easy because it doesn’t have to be viral. It technically doesn’t even have to be interesting. It’s an expression of your company’s personality to a limited audience. You can post links to your blog, pictures from the office, industry news, congratulations to employees, customer testimonials, etc.

Because you’re not worried about exposure, you don’t have to worry about getting into your fans’ news feeds. Those who want to get a feel for your company will be able to find it in searches for your name on Google or Bing as well as by clicking on the link that you post on your website and blog. You’re painting a picture with no fears of hurting your affinity and limited worries about getting negative feedback on your posts. Very few people will see it, but those who do have the opportunity to get a good feeling about your company because you’re not taking risks.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, you will not be reaching people with this strategy. You will have a presence for those who want to find you, but there will be no growth, no additional leads or sales, no engagement, and you won’t be popping up in news feeds. The PR-only approach is a way to hide from all of the potential negatives in social media while still maintaining a presence that isn’t embarrassing. It’s as safe as it gets.

Goal: Basic Presence

This is similar to the PR-only approach, but there’s a chance that it can expose the brand to some additional people. Not many. You won’t be saying a lot but you will be interesting enough to get a little love.

If your goal is to have a basic presence, there are several strategies that can work. One of the easiest is to go with the daily industry picture. This strategy is extremely easy and maintains your presence without much effort. You simply schedule an image that’s relevant to your industry once a day, every day. That’s it. A Jeep dealer would post an image of a Jeep once a day. You can’t mess it up.

This goal is not one that will allow for much growth, but the chances of it ever hurting you are limited. Much like the PR-only approach, having a basic presence is designed mostly for those who find you on search or get directed to the Facebook page from you website. Because it’s likely going to be images that are of interest to your visitors, there’s a chance they might like some of them and get you an EdgeRank boost that can push your posts into news feeds.

This is the most common goal for local businesses today. Ironically, it’s the one that many wrongly classify as aggressive since they’re stepping outside of the bounds of pure business needs and trying to entertain their audience. The reason that this classification is wrong is because it’s still much safer than posting messages. Being fun isn’t necessarily aggressive. It can be, but we’ll discuss that type of goal in the next post.

Goal: Be the Industry Resource

Of all the safe goals, this is the one that requires the most effort. You’re trying to share your knowledge within your industry to your fans. Using the Jeep dealer example, they would be posting tips to maintain a 4WD when it’s not used very often, for example.

This goal can be ramped up more than other safe goals because you’re trying to bring value to the table. Facebook ads can work and this goal can help with branding and public perception if you stay consistent with it. In fact, you can get very active and appreciative fans as the industry resource. There’s a chance that you can build some decent EdgeRank and get shared amongst your target audience.

It takes work. Those who are conservative with their goals but want to be aggressive with the implementation of the strategy will be constantly researching to find more resources to either create or share from other sources. It’s an excellent approach if you have a matching blog with tips and best practices.

Those setting this as their goal do not have to post every day. In fact, once or twice a week can work just as it can with the PR-only approach, but never let your page go dormant for longer than a week. If you have to repost something with a slightly different spin in the description, that’s better than missing a week of posts.

* * *

There are other safe goals out there, but for local businesses if you want to play defense and maintain a presence without spending too much effort keeping it up, these are the best ways that we’ve found to work. The social media game is all about ROI, so if your investment is low, the expected returns can be low as well. When playing it safe, you don’t have to be loved or even liked that much. You just have to be present.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over the aggressive goals that are (to me) much more fun but that also encompass more risk. Playing with Facebook from an aggressive posture takes time and effort and there’s a risk that the returns won’t justify the expenditures. However, there’s also a tremendous opportunity to move the needle.

This is part 1 of 4 in a DrivingSales series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

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About a month ago I was asked when speaking before a group about what I thought the biggest mistake was that businesses were making on Facebook. I replied, “lack of coherent strategy” and went on about how too many business pages seemed like they were posting for the sake of posting, that they didn’t appear to moving in any particular direction, and that they were managing their social media presence on a day to day basis. If I could take back the answer (or better yet, elaborate further), I would.

I was wrong.

The actual biggest mistake that businesses are making starts a step before the strategy phase and would, in most cases, cure the ills that businesses are suffering with their strategy (or lack thereof). It really comes down to goals and the fact that most businesses are not defining their goals from the beginning nor are they adjusting them as their Facebook presence expands. THIS is the actual biggest mistake that they’re making. To those who heard me speak last month about this, I’m sorry to not give the most appropriate answer.

Every Facebook page should have a goal or set of goals that they want to achieve. Many will give the quick answer and say that their goal is to reach as many prospective customers and clients as possible, but this isn’t a real goal. Even in reach, it’s important to establish why you want to reach them and what messages you want them to receive. Are you wanting to reach them with your sales and marketing messages? Are you wanting them to see your logo and expand your branding? Are you wanting them to see that you’re involved in the various local and industry-specific conversations that happen on social media?

Keep in mind – “all of the above” is not a valid answer. That doesn’t mean that you cannot have a robust and diverse presence on Facebook that tackles multiple opportunities, but from a strategy perspective you’re message will get lost if you aren’t reinforcing it regularly. On average, only 16% of your fans are seeing your message at all and that’s if you’re doing a pretty good job at keeping your EdgeRank strong. While diversifying your message is important, keeping focused on a singular strategy should overrule the desire to be eclectic.

Over the next couple of days I will be diving into a wider range of specific strategies that you can employ. In the meantime, do you have any strategies that you’ve considered? Is there a technique that you’ve found to be effective or one that you think would work? I’m classifying the various strategy types into two categories: safe and aggressive. As with setting goals, determining strategies should be focused. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. You’ll end up spitting it all out on the table and embarrassing yourself.

This is part 1 of 4 in a DrivingSales series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

---

About a month ago I was asked when speaking before a group about what I thought the biggest mistake was that businesses were making on Facebook. I replied, “lack of coherent strategy” and went on about how too many business pages seemed like they were posting for the sake of posting, that they didn’t appear to moving in any particular direction, and that they were managing their social media presence on a day to day basis. If I could take back the answer (or better yet, elaborate further), I would.

I was wrong.

The actual biggest mistake that businesses are making starts a step before the strategy phase and would, in most cases, cure the ills that businesses are suffering with their strategy (or lack thereof). It really comes down to goals and the fact that most businesses are not defining their goals from the beginning nor are they adjusting them as their Facebook presence expands. THIS is the actual biggest mistake that they’re making. To those who heard me speak last month about this, I’m sorry to not give the most appropriate answer.

Every Facebook page should have a goal or set of goals that they want to achieve. Many will give the quick answer and say that their goal is to reach as many prospective customers and clients as possible, but this isn’t a real goal. Even in reach, it’s important to establish why you want to reach them and what messages you want them to receive. Are you wanting to reach them with your sales and marketing messages? Are you wanting them to see your logo and expand your branding? Are you wanting them to see that you’re involved in the various local and industry-specific conversations that happen on social media?

Keep in mind – “all of the above” is not a valid answer. That doesn’t mean that you cannot have a robust and diverse presence on Facebook that tackles multiple opportunities, but from a strategy perspective you’re message will get lost if you aren’t reinforcing it regularly. On average, only 16% of your fans are seeing your message at all and that’s if you’re doing a pretty good job at keeping your EdgeRank strong. While diversifying your message is important, keeping focused on a singular strategy should overrule the desire to be eclectic.

Over the next couple of days I will be diving into a wider range of specific strategies that you can employ. In the meantime, do you have any strategies that you’ve considered? Is there a technique that you’ve found to be effective or one that you think would work? I’m classifying the various strategy types into two categories: safe and aggressive. As with setting goals, determining strategies should be focused. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. You’ll end up spitting it all out on the table and embarrassing yourself.

Those who have been in internet marketing for a while realize that search engines are constantly changing. It’s part of the game of staying ahead of the competition to understand these changes and move with them appropriately. Despite this constant state, it’s nothing compared to the changes that happen on Facebook. From a business perspective, the only real winning strategy is to constantly be adjusting the practices, processes, and procedures used to find success.

On Facebook, even the goals are often changed. Unlike search where the goal is almost entirely about driving relevant traffic to a website, social media in general and Facebook in particular often see shifts in the goals for each individual strategy and the overarching strategy as a whole. Between traffic, branding, communications, and messaging, the major components of Facebook marketing remain the same on the surface but digging a little deeper reveals a need to shift with not only the changes that are constantly happening on the platform itself but also those that are happening within the community and the sentiment of the social media world.

One of our biggest focuses on Facebook is helping local car dealers make the most of Facebook. Just in the last month we’ve made adjustments to style, form, and techniques that are in response to the changes. This is an absolute must – a static Facebook strategy is not effective. What worked yesterday may not work today but may work again tomorrow. That’s the nature of the beast.

The most important thing to remember on Facebook is that there are two things to constantly monitor: changes in strategies that are posted on the various blogs (be careful here – more below) and changes in the results of the various campaigns that you run. It’s not just about watching likes and comments. It’s about watching reach (the truly important number in Facebook analytics) and following the sentiment through in a way that can guide future posts.

We must test. We must see what’s working today and make sure it’s still working tomorrow. We have to watch for fatigue; it’s easy to post great images of Mustangs on a Ford dealer’s Facebook page but eventually even the mighty stallion can get old and turn off fans.

We also need a willingness to try new things. Events, Offers, Questions – these can be effective depending on what you’re willing to offer for your business. Landing pages, video styles, advertising styles – all of these play important roles as well.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide nor is it meant to be a scare tactic. Facebook is not hard and it doesn’t have to be that time consuming, either. It does require attention and a system through which the changes and efforts can be tracked for true ROI.

Now, about those blog posts on strategies – take note but be skeptical. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what to do on social media to be successful and these opinions are often contradictory. There are very few overall strategies that have ever made me think, “Wow, that’s the one!” There are plenty of blog posts that make me think, “Hmmm, let’s give that a try and monitor the results.”

That’s the key. Take advice but don’t set anything in stone until you test it thoroughly yourself. Facebook can be fickle, especially when the organic algorithm itself can punish pages for making the wrong moves, but you shouldn’t be too fearful of making a mistake or taking a step backwards. The benefits of a strong campaign or strategy greatly outweigh the potential negatives associated with mistakes, so by fearless but monitor and adjust accordingly. Anything short of regular monitoring and a willingness to change can result in the wrong results.

Those who have been in internet marketing for a while realize that search engines are constantly changing. It’s part of the game of staying ahead of the competition to understand these changes and move with them appropriately. Despite this constant state, it’s nothing compared to the changes that happen on Facebook. From a business perspective, the only real winning strategy is to constantly be adjusting the practices, processes, and procedures used to find success.

On Facebook, even the goals are often changed. Unlike search where the goal is almost entirely about driving relevant traffic to a website, social media in general and Facebook in particular often see shifts in the goals for each individual strategy and the overarching strategy as a whole. Between traffic, branding, communications, and messaging, the major components of Facebook marketing remain the same on the surface but digging a little deeper reveals a need to shift with not only the changes that are constantly happening on the platform itself but also those that are happening within the community and the sentiment of the social media world.

One of our biggest focuses on Facebook is helping local car dealers make the most of Facebook. Just in the last month we’ve made adjustments to style, form, and techniques that are in response to the changes. This is an absolute must – a static Facebook strategy is not effective. What worked yesterday may not work today but may work again tomorrow. That’s the nature of the beast.

The most important thing to remember on Facebook is that there are two things to constantly monitor: changes in strategies that are posted on the various blogs (be careful here – more below) and changes in the results of the various campaigns that you run. It’s not just about watching likes and comments. It’s about watching reach (the truly important number in Facebook analytics) and following the sentiment through in a way that can guide future posts.

We must test. We must see what’s working today and make sure it’s still working tomorrow. We have to watch for fatigue; it’s easy to post great images of Mustangs on a Ford dealer’s Facebook page but eventually even the mighty stallion can get old and turn off fans.

We also need a willingness to try new things. Events, Offers, Questions – these can be effective depending on what you’re willing to offer for your business. Landing pages, video styles, advertising styles – all of these play important roles as well.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide nor is it meant to be a scare tactic. Facebook is not hard and it doesn’t have to be that time consuming, either. It does require attention and a system through which the changes and efforts can be tracked for true ROI.

Now, about those blog posts on strategies – take note but be skeptical. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what to do on social media to be successful and these opinions are often contradictory. There are very few overall strategies that have ever made me think, “Wow, that’s the one!” There are plenty of blog posts that make me think, “Hmmm, let’s give that a try and monitor the results.”

That’s the key. Take advice but don’t set anything in stone until you test it thoroughly yourself. Facebook can be fickle, especially when the organic algorithm itself can punish pages for making the wrong moves, but you shouldn’t be too fearful of making a mistake or taking a step backwards. The benefits of a strong campaign or strategy greatly outweigh the potential negatives associated with mistakes, so by fearless but monitor and adjust accordingly. Anything short of regular monitoring and a willingness to change can result in the wrong results.

If you ever want a crash course on the latest social media studies but don’t want to spend the money to do them yourself, just watch the Super Bowl. You have to assume that if companies are spending millions to produce and distribute 30 second spots for the big game, they’re going to research what’s working today.

This year’s big takeaway was a shift in the way that companies were presenting their social media. As described here, there’s even a debate about the winners and losers. The results of the research were easy to spot. Many advertisers decided that hashtags were the way to go social this year.

If you think about it, nothing could be simpler to understand. Hashtags are social network agnostic with the glaring exception of Facebook. Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and countless other social networks apply hashtags to their streams to allow for tagging and easier searching. Popular hashtags often get featured on these sites. It’s a way to win bigger than simply posting a Twitter handle or Facebook page URL.

You should apply the same concept to your campaigns, particularly when interaction is a part of it (and it should be). It’s no longer about sending people to your profiles through your advertising. They won’t go. If they want to interact with you on social media, they’ll find you (at least they should be able to if you’re doing it right in search and on your website). They will, however, be willing to take part in a conversation. The best way to group conversations on every venue other than Facebook is through hashtags.

For Facebook, things are different and that deserves a blog post of its own, but for now if you focus on hashtags to spread your campaign messages in your advertising (print, television, and just about everywhere else), you’ll find that your social media interactions can improve. If you’re still posting your profile handle next to a blue bird, you’re probably not getting anything out of it and simply wasting space.

If you ever want a crash course on the latest social media studies but don’t want to spend the money to do them yourself, just watch the Super Bowl. You have to assume that if companies are spending millions to produce and distribute 30 second spots for the big game, they’re going to research what’s working today.

This year’s big takeaway was a shift in the way that companies were presenting their social media. As described here, there’s even a debate about the winners and losers. The results of the research were easy to spot. Many advertisers decided that hashtags were the way to go social this year.

If you think about it, nothing could be simpler to understand. Hashtags are social network agnostic with the glaring exception of Facebook. Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and countless other social networks apply hashtags to their streams to allow for tagging and easier searching. Popular hashtags often get featured on these sites. It’s a way to win bigger than simply posting a Twitter handle or Facebook page URL.

You should apply the same concept to your campaigns, particularly when interaction is a part of it (and it should be). It’s no longer about sending people to your profiles through your advertising. They won’t go. If they want to interact with you on social media, they’ll find you (at least they should be able to if you’re doing it right in search and on your website). They will, however, be willing to take part in a conversation. The best way to group conversations on every venue other than Facebook is through hashtags.

For Facebook, things are different and that deserves a blog post of its own, but for now if you focus on hashtags to spread your campaign messages in your advertising (print, television, and just about everywhere else), you’ll find that your social media interactions can improve. If you’re still posting your profile handle next to a blue bird, you’re probably not getting anything out of it and simply wasting space.

From a marketing and advertising perspective, Facebook is a game. It may not be very fun for businesses, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that you don’t have to play along to be successful. On the other hand, some businesses have plenty of fun on Facebook. Whether you do or not makes absolutely no difference, though some will say that if you’re having fun with it that you’ll be more successful. I contend that fun or no fun, you still play the same way if you’re doing it right.

The “game” aspect of Facebook is affinity. It’s the component of Facebook marketing that a business has the most control over while simultaneously having not true control at all. It’s not a conundrum. It’s not double talk. It’s just the way it is.

You see, affinity is a measurement of the engagement you’re receiving on each post. If you’re getting more engagement because of the quality and strategic placement of your content, the affinity portion of your EdgeRank will be higher. It’s for this reason that you do have control. Technically speaking, there really is no true “EdgeRank” anymore. It’s an antiquated algorithm that has been replaced without a name given to the replacement, and since there aren’t a ton of differences in the factors applied to the new algorithm, the name has stuck. Regardless of the name, you have the ability to affect how popular your posts will be based upon the weighted factors attached to affinity.

Facebook really started playing around with how posts from pages appear in the news feeds around the middle of last year. It became noticeable around September. Those who were popular before were seeing dips in their exposure. Things have leveled out now, so wherever you stand currently is a good starting point, particularly if you’re trying to correct errors from the past or reviving a dormant or semi-dormant page.

Your fans and friends of fans are the ones who have the real control over how your posts show in the news feeds, which is why affinity is still the most controllable without giving you any actual control. If your posts are getting ignored or reported as spam, your posts will not show up as well on news feeds. It’s that simple. It’s the reason that you have to play the game whether you like it or not. You can control your own content but you can’t control how people will react to it. All you can really do is learn what works and try to improve.

By improving the quality and focus of what you post, you’ll be able to have the most positive influence on your affinity. Here’s how:

Make Every Post Count

We keep mentioning it here and on other publications, but it definitely cannot be overstated. You cannot waste Facebook posts. You do more harm by posting weak content than if you didn’t post content at all.

Regardless of what you’re running as your strategy, be sure to identify the content that is resonating with your audience. A car dealer should post pictures of cars and the local area, for example. The pictures should be extremely interesting, not just boring pictures of people smiling in front of the car they just bought.

Part of playing the affinity game is making sure that every time your posts appear in front of people, that there’s a chance they’ll like, comment, or share the post. Content that might bring value to you but that brings nothing to the table for the Facebook audience is worthless. In other words, links to your inventory will hurt your efforts. Images of important and interesting parts of your inventory with an accompanying link is better.

Source and Type Matter a Lot

One of the parts that many businesses don’t understand about the way the Facebook algorithm works is that it affects different posts from different sources… well, differently. Let’s say you have an amazing image that you post. It gets a lot of comments, shares, and likes. That popularity will affect all of your posts a little, but it will affect your image posts by far the most.

Sources are another indicator that Facebook doesn’t talk much about but that have an affect on news feed placement. If you post something from Buffer that does well, it will affect future Buffer posts more than it will affect Hootsuite or direct Facebook.com posts, for example.

Keep in mind that the opposite is true as well. If posts of a particular type or from a particular source perform poorly, the algorithm will stop trusting your posts from those sources. They will be presented lower on the news feed.

The Two Things to Avoid

There are a couple of things that hurt you when you post. The first is obvious: spam reports. Every business will get reported for spam from time to time regardless of the content, particularly if the posts are promoted through Facebook advertising. Users in general do not understand how sponsored posts work (or they may understand them too well) and will try to keep your promoted message about the big sale this weekend from ever popping up ahead of pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base by reporting your posts as spam. That’s fine. It happens. Facebook knows this.

What you don’t want to happen is for too many of these reports to come in. Facebook gives your posts a little leeway knowing that there will be some reports no matter what, but when your posts get more than what Facebook believes is reasonable, your future posts and your page itself will be affected. This is bad. It’s very difficult to reverse, even with Facebook advertising. In a conversation with Facebook, I was told that if a page has been posting too much spam when I take them over, that it may be easier to build it back up from scratch rather than try to fix the problem.

The other less-known thing to avoid is getting passed over on the news feed. Every time your posts appears on someone’s news feed, it’s your opportunity to shine. You earn trust in the algorithm when people interact with your posts, but there’s a catch. If they see your posts and do not interact with them in some positive way, Facebook registers that as well. It’s not just someone who saw your post and didn’t do anything. It’s an actual negative that gets registered in Facebook’s data. They know when your posts were viewed. If they get viewed but don’t get liked by a user, they are less likely to be presented to that user as well as that user’s friends in the future.

It’s for this reason that we don’t want posts wasted. Regardless of how many times I say it, it just won’t be enough. You must make every post count.

Look at your posts before you make them live. Are they incredible? If the answer is no, work harder to make it incredible. You can’t post for the sake of posting. Not anymore. You have to “bring it” each and every time you post. Don’t damage your account. Make it shine. The difference is extreme.

One last quick note: everything that I just mentioned about Facebook is very similar to how Google+ handles their network. As it continues to rise, playing their game is also a necessity. Thankfully, it’s so similar that if you work the same basic strategy on both, the results will be similar.