Facebook is the most popular social media site in the world, with more than two billion monthly users. To reach more prospects and customers with your marketing messages you can get pay-per-click (PPC) traffic at an affordable rate from Facebook. This PPC advertising is much less expensive compared to Google AdWords. Even small businesses that have a limited budget can afford Facebook advertising.

One of the most important things to grasp is the difference between Facebook news feed advertising and Facebook boosted posts.

Facebook News Feed Advertising

The Facebook news feed is the backbone of Facebook, showing a wide variety of content from people with whom a person is connected. When someone likes your page, they will become a follower. This means they have to opportunity to see your content on their Facebook page..

Facebook news feed advertising are ads that show up in the news feed along with the rest of the content that is being delivered to your connections, and those you specify as your desired audience. You create an ad from scratch with an image, title, description, and URL.

Facebook Boosted Posts

Facebook boosted posts, or sponsored posts, also appear in the news feed, but with some key differences. If one of your posts proves to be very popular, you can pay for it to reach more people, turning it into a sponsored post.

There is a small shortcut of choosing a similar audience to the people who are already using your account, which can help you target people quickly. The sponsored posts will appear in those people’s news feeds.

Key Differences

The key difference is that the Facebook news feed ads offer you a lot more flexibility than the Facebook boosted posts with regards to appearance, description and providing a URL. The other main difference is that once you post the sponsored post, you can’t edit it. The language you used in the post might not be an effective marketing message.

If you have difficulty finding eye-catching images for your posts, the stock images in the Facebook Ad Center can help. You can choose different formats as well, and even add a call to action button.

Your call to action will depend on your goal for the ad, such as getting subscribers or trying to make sales. Determine your goal first, and then you can decide whether Facebook advertising or Facebook boosted posts are the best format to get your message across.

If you're not sharing your MLM success stories to your Facebook pages by now, you're missing out on lost opportunities. Your success can inspire prospects and help them take action. Facebook is another tool to connect with your prospects and help them to learn more about you and your business. It is not the perfect tool, but one that should not be ignored by MLM businesses. While there is competition there, just like everywhere else, the effort and time you devote to your social pages can pay off in the long run.

Sharing Your MLM Success Stories to Facebook

Facebook pages is a great ground to share your MLM success stories. There are a couple of options to present them to your audience. One way is through text, graphics, images, audio and even video. You can use a combination to help reach further into the world of Facebook. Do not feel limited to one content format. Some people respond better to videos and some to graphics and text. A blend can help you achieve better results as you post your content. Watch for interaction from your audience and adjust your plan of action. If you feel like images and text are working better than videos, then switch to that format.

A consistent schedule is important for social media, especially for pages on Facebook. Your MLM success stories should be posted on a regular schedule. This means figuring out how often you want to share your stories, what and in what format to share them in. If you're unsure on how to proceed, try once a week with no more than two stories. Now you just need to figure out the format. Once you get data back, you can make changes to the sharing plan.

Linking from your MLM success stories to critical pages

Your MLM success stories are bait to draw in prospects to your website. Make sure that you add the right link to each story. All of your content that you share should point back to your pages of one type or another. It's a free form of advertising. Many out there are not adding links and wonder why they lack traffic and success. Be careful not to add too many links either, use only one link per story that you're sharing. This will make it easier for your prospects and for you to track data from. You can change the links out later, if need be.

Facebook is one of the best places to build your business' online presence. It has the largest user base providing you tons of potential customers as well as so many options on the kind of materials you can use. It would be quite the missed opportunity for a business not to use the platform.

It's great for advertising, but with its benefits come guidelines that have to be followed to make sure you stay on Facebook's good side. With that, here are what you should avoid when using Facebook advertising.

Copyright Issues

Facebook is quite particular when it comes to avoiding copyrighted material. They can and will prevent your content from being shown or even remove it without prior notice if they feel that you're violating copyright.

Whether the usage of the copymitted material was intended or not, it still affects your campaign if you've boosted any of your posts.

It does not stop there. It's important that your copy does not come off as "clickbait-y" or explicitly seeking reactions. Not following Facebook's call for quality posts can lead to your material gaining less reach. It affects your overall efficiency.

Less Convenient Organic Reach

The algorithm change that Facebook bought out us all early this year has changed how marketers strategized Facebook campaigns. Everyone has to make posts as relevant as possible if they want any chance of appearing on their users' feeds. This is as opposed to relying on post chronology.

Since a like from a user does not ensure that they'll see your posts anymore, increasing the quality of your posts is a must. Invest more effort into making your content at par with other pages competitive for a spot in the feeds.

Competition

As Facebook is a great advertising channel, you can expect other businesses, including your main competitors, to be there as well. This may make creating an impression more difficult, but not impossible.

It all lies in how creative you are when establishing your identity as a business. When achieved, however, this means getting brand loyalty from you customers.

Too Costly

Note that this is only likely to happen if your campaign is not managed well. Improper targeting, too lengthy of a boost duration, and not checking your stats regularly can harm a campaign's effectiveness.

How a campaign is managed is as important as the campaign itself. Producing a lot of great material will not mean much if it does not reach the right people's feeds or if they get sick of the material so quickly that they block your page.

These are some of the things to be careful with when you decide to advertise on Facebook. That should not turn you off, though, as with anything else that's great, it's bound to have some sort of catch.

But it's all easy to avoid when you work with the right Facebook advertising partner for your campaign, which goes to show how seeking expert assistance with social media marketing is a worth investment.

It's mainly spring, and we talked last month about spring cleaning your business; part of which is freshening up your marketing campaigns. There's no doubt that Facebook continues to dominate digital marketing for both online and brick and mortar companies. But are you using Facebook as strategically as you could?

This month we're going to focus just on Facebook, and to kick it off, let's get an understanding of the platform itself.

First the stats:

• 5 billion active mobile users
• 2 billion monthly active Facebook users
• 4 billion daily active users
• Link and share buttons are viewed across almost 10 million websites daily
• Average time spent on Facebook is 20 -30 minutes

I was shocked by the numbers, so checked various sites to verify them, and while different sites quote slightly different statistics, they are very close to each other.

1.4 billion users check Facebook daily

So, let's get started on using Facebook for YOUR business.

Some of this may seem quite elementary, as most businesses have at one time or another created a Facebook page. The question tends to be, how active (or consistent) are you on posting content? If you have not read our blog on creating a content calendar, or are looking for tips to get started and make this all seem a little less daunting, send us a note, we'll be glad to get you started in the right direct .

What's the difference between your Facebook profile and your Facebook Page?

Simply, your Profile is you. Pictures of family vacations, inside jokes with high school friends – they all belong on this page. Keep business – business, and personal – personal. You do even need a Facebook Profile to set up a Facebook Page.

Your Facebook Page is a specific web page within Facebook with the goal to create a following and share relevant content for your business. You need a Facebook Page to create Facebook Ads (we're not going to cover Ads today but will circle back to this later in the month).

Business owners can use their Page to connect with followers, share stories, build reputation, reach new customers, get feedback, provide customer service, and give their business a voice. Since you need a page to start using Facebook ads, let's focus on how to create a Facebook page that represents your brand, helps establish your credibility, and gets found on Google.

Some of the same advice we give business owners when they're building their new website also apply to Facebook. Look at the competition, big and small brands, what are they doing well, what could they do better, what elements can you build into your own page. With Facebook, you also want to look at which posts get likes and the engagement level.

When starting your page (or revisiting it and refining it further) keep in mind that complete pages have a better search ranking. You may find that some of the tabs do not apply to you, and those can be removed. You also have the flexibility to rearrange the tabs in a way that makes more sense to your business. Build your page with text, videos, photos, and sharing (or curating) content from others. One handy trick, back date some of your posts so they all do not "appear" all on the same day.

Our last tip for this week (and we'll talk about this when we start diving deeper into keywords) is maximizing the impact of your Facebook Page short description. The first 156 characters of your short description appear in Google search results as your meta description, this is your opportunity to include 2-3 highly searched keywords (with your domain name). Curious how this looks, try searching one of your competitors to see what they're doing (just add "Facebook" in your search to filter the results).

We have a lot to cover this month, so stay tuned!

Most nonprofits understand that Facebook is the largest social networking platform on the planet and they make it a point to spend even a little time posting onto a Facebook page. But, there's one thing that would set many nonprofits apart:

A Facebook group!

Although a Facebook page is excellent, generally it's about your work and organization. People know this, so if you would like to engage your supporters and the public in a way that stands out from other nonprofits, then creating a Facebook group is an excellent option.

What's the single most important thing not to do if you create a Facebook group?

The answer is that you should not make your group about you. If you do, that's the quickest way to have people who follow you decide to change their minds and unfollow your group. A group, as in the non-digital world, is about community and a group that allows you the opportunity to engage in a conversation with your followers.

What are a few examples of great nonprofit Facebook groups?

Nonprofit Happy Hour is an excellent group because it creates a space for nonprofits to share their best ideas and tips (and also the things that did not work out so well).

Nonprofits on Facebook is all about … you guessed it … how nonprofits can leverage the power of Facebook to help spread their message.

Nonprofit Social Media Storytelling is a group that helps organizations effectively tell their story to the public.

There are many other groups that you can discover on Facebook that help nonprofits and many charities that are using Facebook groups to communicate about relevant issues and topics to them and their followers.

What's the best strategy for creating a group on Facebook?

Take a look at your mission. Pick the most important issues related to your purpose and provide your supporters with insights about the changes or advances in your industry. Talk about the topic and share lots of relevant third-party content that will help educate and inform your followers. Remember, your supporters are interested in your work because of your programs, but also the issues related to your mission.

What else should I do to make sure that my Facebook group is engaging well?

One of the first places to learn about how to excel on Facebook, including in groups is to visit Facebook's Nonprofit Resource Center .

Another excellent resource is the Facebook Blueprint , which is their education platform and helps you learn other tips and tricks to grow your Facebook audience in many ways, including the groups.

Finally, remember to keep in mind about a group that that it fosters community whereas a page is usually just about the nonprofit organization. So, when you develop a Facebook group, treat it as you would any community activity that you're doing. Keep it fun, informative, engaging, and remember to get great content out there from third parties as well as yourself.

A Facebook group is a great place to place your ads for free or have interactions with other people within your niche. There are literally thousands of groups to join so it's just to find the ones that cater to your niche.

To join a Facebook group you need a Facebook profile if you happen to be one without a Facebook profile type Facebook in the address bar of your browser you will then be taken to a page to sign up for a Facebook profile. And to inform you, Facebook does not have any affiliate programs or offer any affiliate links, so you can not offer Facebook for any monetary gains.

Now if you already have a Facebook profile what you need to do is:

Go to your Facebook profile, while you are on your wall click on the link to the left where it says Groups, type your niche in the search bar at the top or click on the "manage group" under the down arrow in the top right of your Facebook profile.

Whatever engagement you have in the Facebook groups, will show in all your friend's notifications if they are also in those groups. Granted they have not turned off the group's notifications.

As I tried to demonstrate above there are:

3 ways to find and post in groups:

Step 1) Go to the left of your Facebook page while in your news wall (the wall where you get your friends post updates on) Scroll down until you find "Explore" under that, it should be a link that says "Groups"

Step 2) Type your niche keywords in the Facebook search box, eg: internet marketing, make money online, MLM, work from home etc.

Step 3) Go to the little down arrow on the top right and click on it, then a list should come up. Scroll down until you see where it says "Manage Groups" and click on that link.

I have to tell you that Facebook has a restriction on how many groups you can join in one day. I would stick with 10 -15 groups a day just to be safe. I am still not sure what their limit is but it may be something like 50 … I think, but like I said, I am not sure so to stay on the safe side just follow my suggestion on 10-15 groups.

If you do not have anything to promote on Facebook … you can do a search on Google.com with search term / keyword: free affiliate offers