One of the most important lessons you can learn in Facebook marketing for your business is that you can have a much greater impact on your performance online through Facebook by focusing on what’s happening in the real world. Facebook is virtual, but that doesn’t mean it has to focus on the virtual world. Make it real.

If your business is out there doing things in the real world, you have plenty of potential Facebook content to post on your page (as well as you other social media pages and profiles). Do you participate in charities and local events? Do you sponsor a little league team? Do you have a monthly meeting at a local restaurant?

What about your employees? Do they go on trips or do amazing things like skydiving? Does your team have a bowling league? Does your service manager sing in a country western band on Saturdays?

There are plenty of things that we do in the world that aren’t necessarily associated with business. Finding the business posts is an easy task if you’re keeping your eyes, ears, imagination, and smartphone open. When you really get into it, humanizing the business by sharing things that are happening in and out of the store through your activities and employee activities is crucial. You’re business is made of people. On social media, people love other people. That’s what we really want to see on social. Take advantage of this by getting your content through your people.

This is where the people themselves can get involved. They don’t just have to be the content creators with their actions. They can be the content finders. They can brainstorm, make lists, and come up with things that they’re doing in the real world that make sense to get on social media. The content is out there. You just have to focus on people.

One of the most important lessons you can learn in Facebook marketing for your business is that you can have a much greater impact on your performance online through Facebook by focusing on what’s happening in the real world. Facebook is virtual, but that doesn’t mean it has to focus on the virtual world. Make it real.

If your business is out there doing things in the real world, you have plenty of potential Facebook content to post on your page (as well as you other social media pages and profiles). Do you participate in charities and local events? Do you sponsor a little league team? Do you have a monthly meeting at a local restaurant?

What about your employees? Do they go on trips or do amazing things like skydiving? Does your team have a bowling league? Does your service manager sing in a country western band on Saturdays?

There are plenty of things that we do in the world that aren’t necessarily associated with business. Finding the business posts is an easy task if you’re keeping your eyes, ears, imagination, and smartphone open. When you really get into it, humanizing the business by sharing things that are happening in and out of the store through your activities and employee activities is crucial. You’re business is made of people. On social media, people love other people. That’s what we really want to see on social. Take advantage of this by getting your content through your people.

This is where the people themselves can get involved. They don’t just have to be the content creators with their actions. They can be the content finders. They can brainstorm, make lists, and come up with things that they’re doing in the real world that make sense to get on social media. The content is out there. You just have to focus on people.

Here's a quick post for you (I know many of my recent posts have been pretty long).

If you have an email database of your customers and prospects and you are using Facebook advertising to promote your page or posts, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be advertising directly to your database. While I don't recommend jumping in headfirst, you should be jumping in nonetheless.

It's easy. It's almost too easy. This is where, as I've posted in the past, you have to be measured and strategic with your advertising. If you advertise the wrong content or with the wrong message, you can actually do more damage than good. The last thing you need is a high percentage of users who are seeing your Facebook ads to block or report your posts as spam.

Remember, it doesn't have to be true spam for users to report it. People take their Facebook news feed seriously. If they don't want to see your posts, they'll block you. This prevents others from seeing your posts as well, which means that you quickly start to get a much lower effect for the same amount of money.

Facebook is an excellent venue to generate retargeting, to garner foot traffic through offers and events, and to gain exposure. Your email list is powerful, but it's simply not as effective today as it once was to use it directly for emails. They get blocked. They go unopened. You can reapply their usefulness to Facebook if you do it the right way.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Here's a quick post for you (I know many of my recent posts have been pretty long).

If you have an email database of your customers and prospects and you are using Facebook advertising to promote your page or posts, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be advertising directly to your database. While I don't recommend jumping in headfirst, you should be jumping in nonetheless.

It's easy. It's almost too easy. This is where, as I've posted in the past, you have to be measured and strategic with your advertising. If you advertise the wrong content or with the wrong message, you can actually do more damage than good. The last thing you need is a high percentage of users who are seeing your Facebook ads to block or report your posts as spam.

Remember, it doesn't have to be true spam for users to report it. People take their Facebook news feed seriously. If they don't want to see your posts, they'll block you. This prevents others from seeing your posts as well, which means that you quickly start to get a much lower effect for the same amount of money.

Facebook is an excellent venue to generate retargeting, to garner foot traffic through offers and events, and to gain exposure. Your email list is powerful, but it's simply not as effective today as it once was to use it directly for emails. They get blocked. They go unopened. You can reapply their usefulness to Facebook if you do it the right way.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

If you had to pick one brand that was really killing it at SXSW 2013, it would be Chevrolet. That's right, the automaker from the industry known for clinging to traditional advertising techniques continues to have a handful of brands - Chevy and Ford in particular - that are finding success in progressive digital techniques.

I'll go into much more detail about what Chevy is doing here, but if first impressions are anything, Chevy is making a splash in my book. You can't go outside without seeing a "Catch a Chevy" branded vehicle circling the Austin Convention Center. They have several events ongoing, but one thing in particular that has been more successful than some may have expected is their hashtag, #ChevySXSW.

Normally, companies find very little success when they try to hijack hashtags. The primary hashtags get all the action and most of the "hashtag-alongs" get mediocre action with too many negative hashtag interactions. Chevy has been able to blow it out of the water.

Here are some images so far, but I'll be giving a comprehensive report or two about the SXSW experience when I get back. Live-blogging is not my strong point.

If you had to pick one brand that was really killing it at SXSW 2013, it would be Chevrolet. That's right, the automaker from the industry known for clinging to traditional advertising techniques continues to have a handful of brands - Chevy and Ford in particular - that are finding success in progressive digital techniques.

I'll go into much more detail about what Chevy is doing here, but if first impressions are anything, Chevy is making a splash in my book. You can't go outside without seeing a "Catch a Chevy" branded vehicle circling the Austin Convention Center. They have several events ongoing, but one thing in particular that has been more successful than some may have expected is their hashtag, #ChevySXSW.

Normally, companies find very little success when they try to hijack hashtags. The primary hashtags get all the action and most of the "hashtag-alongs" get mediocre action with too many negative hashtag interactions. Chevy has been able to blow it out of the water.

Here are some images so far, but I'll be giving a comprehensive report or two about the SXSW experience when I get back. Live-blogging is not my strong point.

There was a promise made when the automotive industry started embracing online marketing ahead of traditional advertising, when dealerships started hiring internet managers with marketing experience or making them pure marketing managers altogether. This was the promise of the last two years and many vendors have done their part to try to give the appropriate tools to help this new generation of dealership employees.

One of the most important things that dealership marketing employees can do to move the needle is to take advantage of their content management system (CMS). I’m not going to go too deeply into the importance of having a true CMS other than to make this one statement: if your website platform is not geared to allow you to easily create marketing pages for search and social, your competition has a huge advantage over you.

Assuming that you have a proper CMS and full access to it, it’s time to generate content. One of the myths that has been spread through the industry is that content should be designed for Google. That’s absolutely not true. In fact, Google uses social signals, inbound links, and engagement on the pages to help determine if a website should be ranked higher in their search results. Translation: if your content is designed for Google, it’s really not designed for Google at all.

Google wants content designed for people. Trust me – they can tell the difference.

Take advantage of your CMS regularly. The term is a very loose one – you can use it however best suits you. Regularly may be a couple of times per week or it could be a couple of times per month, but as long as you can stay consistent and make it happen on whatever regular basis fits your schedule and resources, you will have the upper hand on your competitors.

In future blog posts we’ll go over some content ideas that will help. It’s not just about building pages like “Milwaukee Ford Dealers” that are designed to go after specific search terms. It’s about building pages like “2014 Chevrolet SS is THE Performance Sedan” that are designed to be engaging and encourage interaction with the pages themselves.

In the meantime, try to determine how much time you can dedicate to this. It truly requires dedication. You can’t just try it and let it go. Remember, content is king.

There was a promise made when the automotive industry started embracing online marketing ahead of traditional advertising, when dealerships started hiring internet managers with marketing experience or making them pure marketing managers altogether. This was the promise of the last two years and many vendors have done their part to try to give the appropriate tools to help this new generation of dealership employees.

One of the most important things that dealership marketing employees can do to move the needle is to take advantage of their content management system (CMS). I’m not going to go too deeply into the importance of having a true CMS other than to make this one statement: if your website platform is not geared to allow you to easily create marketing pages for search and social, your competition has a huge advantage over you.

Assuming that you have a proper CMS and full access to it, it’s time to generate content. One of the myths that has been spread through the industry is that content should be designed for Google. That’s absolutely not true. In fact, Google uses social signals, inbound links, and engagement on the pages to help determine if a website should be ranked higher in their search results. Translation: if your content is designed for Google, it’s really not designed for Google at all.

Google wants content designed for people. Trust me – they can tell the difference.

Take advantage of your CMS regularly. The term is a very loose one – you can use it however best suits you. Regularly may be a couple of times per week or it could be a couple of times per month, but as long as you can stay consistent and make it happen on whatever regular basis fits your schedule and resources, you will have the upper hand on your competitors.

In future blog posts we’ll go over some content ideas that will help. It’s not just about building pages like “Milwaukee Ford Dealers” that are designed to go after specific search terms. It’s about building pages like “2014 Chevrolet SS is THE Performance Sedan” that are designed to be engaging and encourage interaction with the pages themselves.

In the meantime, try to determine how much time you can dedicate to this. It truly requires dedication. You can’t just try it and let it go. Remember, content is king.

Facebook has made an update to its Power Editor tool, a tool that is designed for bulk campaigns and ads from various pages one owns or admins. The Power Editor is to help keep track of multiple pages to help keep you organized, certainly a great tool for Social Media Specialists. The update has allotted more accuracy towards where you want ads to target which allows you more control on where you want your ad to be seen and which type of campaign you prefer.

What are the benefits of Facebook’s Power Editor?

The main benefits of using the Facebook Power Editor is to save you time by enabling the ability to mass edit ads and campaigns from one location, no matter how many pages you have, you can manage your ads, campaigns and page posts.

It allows you to optimize from within by sorting ads with key stats and performance. It is also compatible with Excel so you do not need to waste time copying and pasting your information, to keep track or submit elsewhere when off of Facebook.

How-To Install Facebook Power Editor

It is only compatible with Google Chrome Browser so to begin you must download or open Chrome. From within Chrome, login to Facebook and go to your Facebook Ads Manager, on the left-hand side you will see a tab titled “Power Editor”, once clicked you can download and install (You can choose all accounts or specific accounts).

Now with Facebook’s latest update to the Power Editor, you have more flexibility when choosing what type of ad you want to create by selecting from the following:

• Ad
• Sponsored Story
• Mobile Only Ad
• Video Ad
• Sponsored Search Results

With this latest change you are now able to choose a more accurate form of ad creation yielding clearer results.

[Facebook Ads image via digitalsocialsound]

Facebook has made an update to its Power Editor tool, a tool that is designed for bulk campaigns and ads from various pages one owns or admins. The Power Editor is to help keep track of multiple pages to help keep you organized, certainly a great tool for Social Media Specialists. The update has allotted more accuracy towards where you want ads to target which allows you more control on where you want your ad to be seen and which type of campaign you prefer.

What are the benefits of Facebook’s Power Editor?

The main benefits of using the Facebook Power Editor is to save you time by enabling the ability to mass edit ads and campaigns from one location, no matter how many pages you have, you can manage your ads, campaigns and page posts.

It allows you to optimize from within by sorting ads with key stats and performance. It is also compatible with Excel so you do not need to waste time copying and pasting your information, to keep track or submit elsewhere when off of Facebook.

How-To Install Facebook Power Editor

It is only compatible with Google Chrome Browser so to begin you must download or open Chrome. From within Chrome, login to Facebook and go to your Facebook Ads Manager, on the left-hand side you will see a tab titled “Power Editor”, once clicked you can download and install (You can choose all accounts or specific accounts).

Now with Facebook’s latest update to the Power Editor, you have more flexibility when choosing what type of ad you want to create by selecting from the following:

• Ad
• Sponsored Story
• Mobile Only Ad
• Video Ad
• Sponsored Search Results

With this latest change you are now able to choose a more accurate form of ad creation yielding clearer results.

[Facebook Ads image via digitalsocialsound]