Facebook

 Introduction

Facebook is the leading social community online. With over 300 million users, there has never been a better way to maximize your exposure, and get your message seen by a massive customer base.

The greatest thing about advertising with Facebook, is the flexibility of your advertisements.

You can customize your advertisements so they appear only to specific groups or segments of people based on the information contained within their profile or based on gender, location or personal preferences.

For example, if your product is tailored towards single mothers, you could develop your advertisements so that they are triggered to appear only for those who have indicated that they are single mothers in their profiles, or who have demonstrated interest in similar products or services based on their personal profile, communities or groups they've joined, or other advertisements they've responded to.

Let’s get started!

Create Targeted Advertisements

In order to create the most compelling, responsive and profitable advertisements, you need to utilize Facebooks option to heavily target and tailor your advertisements based on your target market.

With facebook, you can set your ads up so that they appear only to specific people, based on age, location, gender, interests, hobbies or even based on the groups they have joined within the Facebook community.

You will want to conduct market research so that you can accurately define your target market and develop advertisements that target specific segments of your market.

Facebook implores a quality control system to ensure that the advertisements that run throughout their community stay within their guidelines and do not offend or disrupt member activity or overall experience. 

Use their quality control system to develop compelling advertisements that stand out in the marketplace, and capture the attention of potential buyers.

Also keep in mind that Facebook advertising is based on display, rather than search. This means that your ads will be automatically triggered to appear based on your settings, rather than when a user conducts an on-site search.

Users can also choose to rate advertisements, helping to retain quality throughout the community.

Improve your Click Through Rate

Your advertisements click through rate plays an integral role in saving you money while boosting exposure and reaching out to your target market.

It’s important to keep a pulse on your click through rate so that you can correct any problems with your advertisement, or make adjustments to improve your overall CTR.

If your advertisements CTR drops too low, it could be automatically paused or removed by Facebook, so you really want to pay attention to how well it’s converting. 

Typically, your ads should never fall below a 2% conversion rate.

One of the easiest ways of increasing your CTR is by creating a highly targeted advertisement.

You want your ad to appear only to those who are within your target demographic, while making sure that your advertisements text or any images used speak directly to your customer base.

Consider split testing various advertisements within the Facebook community to determine what works best, based on your industry or niche market.

You should also pay attention to the times of day that your ads appear. You can choose to either run your ads consistently throughout the day, or have them only appear at specific times (or even specific dates). 

Keep in mind the time zone of your target market, so that your ads are running based on the most active time of day or night.

Stay Within Facebook Guidelines

It’s important to understand how Facebook advertising channels work, and what is permitted as well as what is not allowed within the marketplace. 

Facebook is very flexible with the types of advertisements that are allowed to be displayed within their community, however they do not allow images or text that may be considered offensive.
 

Setting Your Maximum Daily Bid

One of the most important aspects of setting up an effective Facebook advertisement is in the maximum daily bid that you are willing to pay.  The higher your daily bid, the more exposure your ad will receive.

You want to start off with a lower bid if you are just getting used to advertising with Facebook, and increase your maximum daily bid as you fine-tune your advertisements for maximum results. 

It’s important to always keep a pulse on how well your advertisement is converting, so that you can improve click through rates and overall response.

When you create an advertisement with Facebook, they will suggest a maximum bid based on your advertisements focus and target market (based on your personal configuration and preferences). 

You can start off by setting your maximum daily bid slightly lower than what’s suggested and increase it as you improve your advertisements conversion rates so that you are getting the most bang for your buck!

CPC Versus Impression Based Ads

With Facebook, you can develop advertisements where you either pay for impressions or based on the number of clicks your ad receives.

If you are just getting started with Facebook advertising, I recommend choosing cost per click (CPC), so that you can accurately test your advertisements, while paying only for responses rather than just views.

You can always change your advertisement format to ‘impression based’ later on in the event you wish to test out alternative options.

I wish you the best of success!

8 Steps To Facebook Adventure

Once a social platform for college students, the 40 million active membership site facebook is the latest buzzword in social media marketing. However, most members are extremely online savvy and they smell blatant advertisements from miles away. It is important to know some basics and gain experiences in utilizing the site and interacting with its members before you start planning your facebook marketing adventure.

1. Create a profile. The first step is to create a profile. Sign up using your real name and upload some pictures. If you do not have an email with a top-level edu domain, by default you join a regional network based on your zip code or international address. Later, you have the option to join your company's network and change your regional networks. You can change your networks twice in a 60-day period.

Always upload a profile picture. If you don't upload a picture, facebook places a default question mark icon. It is a good strategy to show your face in facebook. Don't use group pictures for your profile because others may have difficulty identifying you in the group pictures. Don't use logos, your cute cat or dogs’ pictures, or a picture of your expensive car and boat.

You don't have to fill all the profile information. Fill only the information you are comfortable sharing with others. If you want to find dates using facebook, fill up the relationship status feature of your profile accordingly. Don't change the status often because others will notice it and doubt your trustworthiness.

2. Make friends. The site can find active facebook friends for you using emails in your address books of a few free web email providers like yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc. Once you get a few friends, new friend requests will pour in from your friends of friends. You can also search for friends and send requests. Work on creating a network of 100 to 200 friends. Don't make friends with celebrities because in most cases these are fake profiles setup for marketing purposes.

3. Upload pictures and videos. Start uploading some interesting pictures and group them in albums of travel pictures, baby shower photos, bachelor party scenes, etc. Pictures help people connect with your life without meeting you face to face. Always upload a number of related pictures or themes.

Create a random albums and put all your random pictures in the random album. Tag your pictures to identify people on the pictures. When you tag your friends in your pictures, they show up in their wall. You can also share your albums with others outside facebook. You can upload personal videos using your browser or mobile phone and directly record videos to facebook.

4. Use friends' walls and never post on your own wall. You have a wall in facebook for others to write notes. Don't write in your own wall. Write in your friends' walls. Your friends will write notes, share videos or links in your wall. You do the same in your friends' walls. When a friend posts something on your wall, reply to the post. If you find the posting annoying, politely ask them to back off and clean up your wall.

5. Join a few groups. There are all sorts of organic groups in facebook. These are groups of people with similar interests. Find a few that interest you and join them. You can create your own group but first find out if one exists on the same topic. This is an excellent place to be creative and get support from a bunch of people for your cause.

6. Create events and invite people. If you want to host a party, this is the feature you will use. Create your events and invite others to join. You can make an event public for your friends to see or private for the invitees to browse. Under my event, you can browse your friends' public events. You will immediately know who are your fake friends because they did not invite you to their gala dinner they are hosting.

7. Send notes and share links. You send notes to your friends. Depending on the topic, you can send a note to a few friends or to all friends in your network. Don't send chain letter notes because people find these repulsive. Your notes show up in your friends' news feeds or on their walls. A tagged note shows up on the wall, otherwise, it is found in the homepage news feed. Use share for sharing links, even though you can use this feature for sharing notes. Share that link of a cheap travel-booking site you have found while surfing the net with friends planning their upcoming vacations.

8. Visit your homepage everyday. Besides your profile page in facebook, you also have a homepage. You homepage displays collaborative news feeds of all your friends, event and group invitations, friendship requests, friends' birthdays, etc. If you want to know what is going on in your facebook friend circle, visit your homepage everyday.

The other features of facebook are poke, marketplace, facebook mobile, and hundreds of applications that enhance the facebook experience. As the facebook awareness grows, online marketers have started pounding the facebook door to gain a foothold. Future articles will discuss different ways to market your products and services to facebook members without insulting their intelligence.

Avatarbook - Facebook Meets Online Gaming.

For those of you who don’t know, the Sims Online is undergoing a revolution. Having been left standing for the last few years with little to no input, EA are at last re-shaping the game, and the world of multiplayer gaming as we know it. Sound like hyperbole? Perhaps, perhaps not; check out their latest addition to the online gaming experience: AvatarBook.

Facebook made flesh

So what is Avatarbook? Well, the clue is in the name. What is one of the largest social networking websites on the planet at the moment? That’s right -– Facebook. With over 58 million users, Facebook is the primary reason that many of us log on in the morning. But, as we all know, it has its limitations. As do online games.

One problem with online games is that they can be too divorced from reality -– you have your online friends, and your real-world friends, and the two remain firmly divided. Ditto Facebook -– your user-circle is limited by who you already know, and it’s hard to get to know people outside of that circle on a one-to-one basis without sharing all your private data or being introduced by a friend of a friend.

All that is set to change, with a new application that could change our networking community forever. When Linden Labs made Linden Dollars (the currency of the hugely popular game Second Life) exchangeable for real-world currency, they opened up the world of online gaming by bringing it into the real world. Now EA want to do the same thing, by allowing users of the Sims Online to link their Avatars' accounts to their Facebook profiles.


Sharing Information

Avatarbook has two faces -- the in-game version and the Facebook version. In-game you can use it much like Facebook, in that you can find other Avatars and view their limited profiles. For friends the full profiles are visible, with walls for people to write on and updatable status. Your profile will also show if your lot is open or not, and the application an be used to quickly make your way around EA Land as you jump from friend to friend.

In Facebook, the application shows your Avatar's details (unless you have chosen a private setting) and picture, and whether or not you are logged on to the game. This is a useful way for players to find out who is online without having to log in themselves. You can also invite other users of Facebook who are not already Sims Online players to download the application and see your Avatar profile -- a move that EA hopes will attract more people to the game.

For the time being, then, the bulk of information that can be shared is Avatar-related. Their skills, properties and friends can all be viewed, and their Wall. The identity of the real-life person behind the Avatar is kept private, at least for now.

Privacy

Privacy is a major issue as far as EA are concerned, so at the moment Avatarbook is fairly limited in how much information can be shared. In the Sims game you can add people to your friends list, which will provide them with a link to your Facebook profile rather than making a direct link, though that is set to change as the application grows. Also, nobody in EA Land (the Sims Online world where the application will be available) will have access to your real name - you will be searchable only by your Avatar's name. EA have stated that they intend to allow players to lower their privacy settings so that more information can be shared, but at the moment they're playing it safe.

The Future

This application obviously shows great potential, and it is something that EA are going to continue to develop as they gain feedback from users. The Sims Online game is going through a revolution at the moment, with their free trial set to become permanent free play in the very near future (with limited gameplay for non-payers, much like in Second Life). For years now Second Life has been leading the pack in terms of innovation and social interactivity, but if EA keeps this up then we could be looking at a new contender for the crown. After all, they did come up with the two most popular games of all time (Sims and Sims 2), so some would say that this is less of a surprise than a belated homecoming. Certainly one to watch, at any rate.

Facebook: An Effective Tool to Increase Your Sales

Today, the internet is one of the most popular places for businesses to advertise in. Every website you visit, you will see that there will be advertising everywhere. This is called internet marketing.

If you have a business of your own and you want to effectively market your products or services, you will see that the internet will be one huge bulletin board that you can advertise in. Here, you will be able to virtually advertise anything and it is open for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

With hundreds of millions of people visiting the internet on a daily basis from all over the world, you can be sure that advertising here will definitely increase your sales.

One great website that you may want to concentrate your online advertising campaign on is Facebook. Today, this social networking website is now considered to be one of the largest social networking websites existing. Here, you will see that over 62 million people are now active members and are still continually increasing.

With figures like this, you know that it will provide you with a very big opportunity to increase your sales and your profit. In fact, it is so huge that large companies or corporations are now marketing on Facebook.

Basically, Facebook is a social networking website. Once you join, you will be able to find your friends who are also a member and add them to your list. This will create a small group of your friends and it will enable you to view their profiles and know more about them and vice versa. You can even send and receive messages as well as comments.

Also, you will be able to post on bulletins that your friends will be able read.

These are the things that you can do with Facebook. It is basically the fastest growing social networking websites today. Because of this, a lot of people have started marketing on Facebook. The great thing about Facebook marketing is that it provides a free and easy way to promote products and services. With the included tools in Facebook, you will be able to take advantage of it, such as the Stumble Upon and Digg buttons to promote your website or your products and services.

This is a great way to generate targeted traffic to your website and it will enable you to increase the potential in selling your products and services as well as increase the volume of sales.

Because Facebook is available for people from all over the world, your business will be able to reach out to more people if you advertise on Facebook.

In today's ever competitive business world, you know that you need to use every tool available in order to get ahead of your competitors. So, the next time you are thinking about marketing your business online, you might want to try marketing in Facebook. Here, you will be able to reach out to more people and it is also easy to do so and the best thing about it is that it's free.

With Facebook, you will definitely be able to efficiently market your business. Marketing in Facebook is free, easy, and fun.

These are the things that you need to remember whenever you want to try marketing online. Try joining Facebook and you will see the potential on letting it help your business grow.

Mayor Villaraigosa Shares Control Of The Los Angeles Schools

Last month, I wrote in an article about Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposing a legislative bill to take control of the Los Angeles schools (see Los Angeles Schools Strongly Opposed to Takeover by Mayor Villaraigosa). Reform Bill 1381 passed the state legislature at the end of August, with some changes.

Villaraigosa, who portrayed himself as the one person who could make a success of the Los Angeles schools system, instead must share control of the school system with the Los Angeles schools board and the Council of Mayors. The mayor did, however, receive direct control of three low-performing high schools and their feeder elementary and middle schools.

The final reform bill makes running the Los Angeles schools much more complex for everyone concerned. First, there is a logistical problem with Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles schools board in two separate locations, making decision making a longer, more drawn out process. The role of teachers in deciding curriculum now is uncertain, and many believe the mayor’s plan may impede new school construction, considered a successful endeavor by the Los Angeles schools board. The bill’s language is confusing, already causing conflicting interpretations.

There also is a question on the legality of the bill, which is expected to face an immediate legal challenge. The Los Angeles schools board, which was adamantly opposed to the bill, already has discussed a lawsuit, claiming that the bill violates the requirement in the state constitution that schools remain within the educational system. The opinion of the legislature’s counsel is that the Los Angeles schools board has a case, but Villaraigosa believes it will survive a challenge.

Ever the politician, the mayor now is looking to foster cooperation with teachers, parents and the Los Angeles schools board, but he may find this difficult. He leveled blistering criticism at the school board and its members over the past year. Even Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) criticized Villaraigosa during a hearing by the Assembly Education Committee, which she chairs, stating that she was disappointed that he did not have the same dialogue with the Los Angeles schools board as he did with the teachers’ unions.

Villaraigosa continues to promote the passage of the bill as an opportunity for parents, educators, the Council of Mayors, the cities and himself to partnership for the betterment of the Los Angeles schools. Though no clear specifics have even been given by the mayor on how he will proceed, he remarked that the new power-sharing arrangement will reshape and invigorate a “lethargic bureaucracy that has underserved generations of students”. He further stated that success depends on his leadership and the contributions of his Los Angeles schools partners.

Custom Photo Album: Four Easy Steps to Design a Unique Photo Album Gift

Are you looking for just the perfect gift for an upcoming event? Try to design a custom photo album. You can never go wrong when you give photo album as a gift. Generally, people has a lot of photos and seems to always have a need for photo albums.

Although photo albums make a great and practical gift option, the enthusiasm for photo album gifts diminished.  But this can be easily countered with a unique custom photo album gift.

In this article, you will learn how you can design a unique photo album that your loved ones will adore.

Establish A Theme for your Photo Album Design

A theme for your photo album will help you immensely in creating a unique custom photo album design.  The most popular theme for custom made photo album is Wedding, Sweet Sixteen, Debut, or Quinceniera.

When you combine custom made photo album idea with milestone events (e.g. wedding or birthday), the photo album gift is not only unique but very practical.  The recipient of the custom photo album could group all of her or his photo into one photo album that matched the occasion.


Establish a Profile of Gift Recipient

This step is very important if you are designing custom made photo album as a gift.  One of the major problems when designing a photo album gift is that people forget that they are designing it for someone else.

Creating a profile ensures that your photo album design reflects the sense of personality of the gift recipient. Profile information could be as simple as their age, favorite color, or style.


Selecting Color Combination for Photo Album Design

Color combinations play a key role in designing a unique custom made photo album design.  If the photo album gift is relevant to a party (e.g. Sweet Sixteen, Wedding, etc.), then you can use the motive color of the party.  Otherwise, select the recipient's favorite color.

Color combinations could make your photo album unique.  After all, how many photo albums have you seen that has different color combinations?  If you wish to use color combination for a unique photo album design, color wheel makes a great reference.


Brainstorm A Unique Photo Album Design

Now that you have a theme, profile, and color scheme, you are ready to create a unique design for your photo album.  Basing your photo album design on the profile from Step 2 would make your custom made photo album gift absolutely priceless and unique to the recipient.  This step forces your to link your theme, profile, and color schemes together to arrive with one unique photo album design.

These four basic steps will help you tremendously in creating a unique custom photo album gift that the recipient will fall in love with.  It requires a little bit more research and thought, but you would be please with the recipient's reaction.

Excellent Example of Electronic Evolution

No one had a clue during the early days of television the incredible impact that this device would have over people and their daily lives nearly a century later. I can hardly believe the difference between the television offerings of my childhood and the vast number of quality shows, channels, and information that is available by simply turning on the television. In addition to that, the quality of sound that can be achieved through the simple act of adding a receiver and surround sound speakers to your television is day and night when comparing before and after.

I do not think for one second anyone could have possibly anticipated the global impact that televisions have introduced. Add to that the entertainment value and the fact that we are now using our televisions for much more than simply watching and you have opened up a whole new world of entertainment. Surround sound not only works wonders with movies and (some) television shows but is also an excellent enhancement for video games and even music.

Televisions are also being used for more purposes now than ever before. With each generation of video game system there are new features added that require more from the televisions and speaker systems we spend so much of our time enjoying. From the days when people first gained the ability to check their email on their television sets, the technology seed has been planted for greater things to come. Each year new televisions and new surround sound and home theater systems hit the market with amazing success among consumers. We all want more sound, better pictures, and more functionality from a piece of technology that is not yet a century old. It’s amazing the progress that has been made already and the rapid rate at which this technology continues to evolve.

Surround sound is only one example of the great possibilities that exist in the entertainment industry, it simply happens that this is one piece of the technology puzzle that enhances so many other of the things that we enjoy so much on a daily basis. From gaming to music to movies, all are enhanced by the technology and premium sound that a good surround sound system with high quality speakers can provide. When purchasing speakers for your surround sound system, be sure to make sure that they are THX certified in order to assure that you are getting top quality speakers for your surround sound system or home theater.

You will find as you sort through the various surround sound systems in the market today that there are many options available to you. I hope that you will take the time to find the one that you like best and keep an open mind when you bring it into your home. It is important to remember that you may find the system doesn’t sound as good in your home as it did in the store (acoustics are going to be different). If this is the case with your system, make a note of the differences that you find troublesome, and return the kit to the store, then ask for recommendations on systems that might work better in your home. You should also include things like the size of the room, the types of walls and flooring you have (all of these things affect the acoustical quality of your room). Most importantly, make the most of the advances that technology has allowed and enjoy.