Facebook to Serve Up Ads Based on Your Offline Shopping Habits

Facebook to Serve Up Ads Based on Your Offline Shopping Habits

Facebook will now be able to target some ads based on your offline shopping habits thanks to some partnerships it announced on Wednesday.
The social networking giant has inked a deal with data mining firms Datalogix, Acxiom and Epsilon that will apply their records about customers' offline purchases to Facebook's Custom Audiences product. Facebook is also working with BlueKai "as a marketing data platform to bring a brand's first party site data to use for targeting on Facebook," according to the company. Custom Audiences, which was released last August, lets advertisers identify Facebook users by their Facebook ID, phone number or email address. Now, advertisers can match that information with data from the firms, which was gleaned through shopper loyalty programs.
As Facebook explained in a blog post, the deals let advertisers target by generic product segment: "We will work with these select third parties to create pre-defined targeting categories on Facebook. Businesses of all sizes will now be able to target categories like "soda drinkers" or "auto-intenders."
According to Facebook, the change means advertisers can skip a step to identify an audience segment by its purchase intent:

For example, an auto dealer may want to customize an offer to people who are looking to buy a new car. To do this today, many businesses work with third parties to better understand how to identity and reach that audience. With today's updates businesses can now do this same thing by showing ads to people on Facebook who may be in the market for a new car.

Facebook also claims that it won't share personal data about users with marketers. As with other Facebook ad, you can also opt out at any time.

Four Smart Strategies to Help You Engage With More of The Right People on LinkedIn

Engage With More Of The Right People On LinkedIn


If you’re on LinkedIn, you’re a member of the world’s largest business networking site for professionals.
With over 200 million people using LinkedIn you need to find ways of building relationships with the right people so that you can make good use of this platform.
Of course, the first thing you need to do is to decide who you want to engage with: prospective clients, your next employer, strategic business partners, professionals in your industry etc. Once you who you want to attract you will need a plan to make sure you don’t waste your time and your efforts when you’re using LinkedIn.
Incorporate the following strategies into that plan and you’ll stand more chance of success.

# 1. Make A Good First Impression

You don’t get much time to make a first impression on LinkedIn or anywhere else. When people find your profile via a search or by accident they will look at your photograph and at your professional headline. In two to three seconds they will have decided whether or not to read further. You have one image plus 120 characters to inform the reader of:

•  Your role
• The level at which you work
• Your industry sector
• The value you deliver.

Here’s how I use my 120 characters. 

With your image and your professional headline you’re trying to show that you’re a professional person. You want to help the people viewing your profile to decide that they want to connect with you, to contact you, to read more about you and so on.
Spend time getting your message right and practise squeezing more information into your 120 characters.
You will be rewarded for your efforts.

#2. Use Relevant Key Words

Before you start writing your summary and the information about your career, your company and your work think about the key words you intend to use as you write your profile. You will use these words in the job title fields, in project headings, in your list of skills and expertise and in the text that you write – just like when you’re writing a web page.
Be specific. If I’m looking for an EU VAT Taxation Specialist on LinkedIn (and I recently sourced such a person for a client) I would not have found you, if you had just called yourself an accountant in your profile.
Likewise, if you describe yourself as an executive coach, I won’t know that you’re an expert in conflict resolution, dispute resolution and employment tribunal avoidance unless you tell me.
LinkedIn is the place to be specific with the terms you use about yourself and your abilities.
Write in the language of the people you want to find you. Explain, for example, that you help newly appointed executives to transition from management roles to board level responsibilities and include several references to what you do so that your expertise will show up in LinkedIn searches.
Use the skills and expertise area, too. Use key word terms that you hope your target audience. They will find you more easily if you work in this way. 

#3. Be Visual

LinkedIn is nudging us all to be more visual in our approach to using the platform, whether we’re producing company pages or working on individual profiles. Follow the advice.
Upload images, videos and presentations to supplement the text you write. This will help to build your credibility on LinkedIn.
You’ll demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about and that you can deliver. For example, if you’re a professional speaker, video clips of you delivering a presentation will underline your abilities.

#4. Use Updates Effectively

Even if you have a great profile and a fantastic company page, you won’t engage with enough of the right people on LinkedIn, if you wait for them to find you. What you need to do is to post updates that will be of interest to your chosen target audience.
Don’t simply post a link to the latest article in a newspaper or other authoritative source. Write something about the update. Offer an opinion about why it is important. Ask a question. Explain why you’re taking the position you’re taking in your blog post. Make the news story part of your communication. Don’t just repost something you have read elsewhere.
Don’t stop there. Use the “like” function and the “comment” function to show you pay attention to the updates of people in your community. Share relevant content on your profile and in the groups to which you belong. Again, make a point with your update. Show that you are an interesting person with well-thought-out opinions that are worth listening to. Don’t just join in the conversation. Start one, and because you’re on LinkedIn, make it a meaningful conversation.
…Finally
The majority of people on LinkedIn don’t use the platform well. Their profiles are badly written and they don’t know how build, or to engage with, a professional community. If you follow any of the strategies here, you will get ahead of a lot of people on LinkedIn. You’ll also be starting to make LinkedIn work for you.
I know LinkedIn works for me and for my business. See how you can use it to help you. Which of these strategies do you think will help you to make a big impact on LinkedIn quickly? You’re welcome to share your thoughts and your plans below.

20 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Social Media

20 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Social Media

Social media marketing for business is new and not for everyone. It is being implemented by the innovators and the early adopters that love to lead the pack. It is also a very different way of communicating your brands message and with that comes challenges, opportunities and threats.
There is also the joy of learning new ways of marketing, with that there is often the accompanying pain of mistakes that comes along for the ride.
So maybe you should not use social media because it is not for you just yet!

Here are 20 reasons not to use social media

1. You are a traditionalist and value the “good old days”
2. You don’t want to be found
3. You don’t want to be heard
4. You have shares in the “Yellow Pages”
5. You like spending thousands on media you can’t measure
6. You highly value your perceived privacy
7. You don’t want to hear what your customers are saying
8. You don’t want any new customers as you are already too busy
9. You’re afraid people might say nasty things about you
10. You want to give your competition a head start
11. It’s a waste of your valuable time
12. Because its only a fad and it will go away
13. I like to keep things simple and it’s all a bit complex with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and all that stuff
14. I am a real person and I don’t believe in those fake online social networks
15. Social media sites are largely populated with people who have nothing better to do with their time
16. Social media is at an evolutionary stage I will wait until it is more mature
17. I don’t want to be overexposed
18. If I subscribe or join I will be spammed
19. There is something better around the corner, I can afford to wait
20. Social media will reduce real face to face opportunities because I would waste my time online

Are there any other reasons you shouldn’t use social media?

5 New Ways to Improve Your Facebook EdgeRank

5 New Ways to Improve Your Facebook EdgeRank

1. Post Photos

The Facebook news feed algorithm appears to be calculated both per fan and per type of post. That means a person might see Coca-Cola’s photo posts, but not the company's link posts. There are six post types: a text-only status update, a photo, a link, a video, a platform post, and a question. The first four are the most commonly used.

After some research, its clear that a Facebook page gets more fan engagement from photos than links, statuses, or videos. In fact, photos get as much as twenty times more engagement. So, even when you need to post a link to your website, you should post a photo with that link. You might also consider posting a thumbnail of your video and a link to the video, rather than featuring the video itself. To do that, enter the status update and link first, then hit the x to cancel the video preview, then click on "photo/video" and choose the image file you want to attach.
Posting everything with an image will increase the percent of fans you reach. In all these cases, your status and link will show up above the image. My experiments show that you can get a good amount of clicks on links above photos. For example, one post (also amplified by sponsored story ads) reached 114, 434 people and engaged 619 people (0.5% of reach), while the link received 311 clicks (0.27% of reach and half the engaged users).
You can get creative with your message by taking things that might have started as status updates, and adding the same message into an image. Someecards is a popular and funny e-card website, and it allows you to create your own. Just choose a background color and one of their line drawings, then add your text. You can save the image and post it on your Facebook page. Do this manually to make sure it’s a photo post-type. A great example of this comes from The American Heart Association. They used a card to humorously promote children eating vegetables.

It’s not the funniest image you’ve ever seen, but many big organizations can’t be as edgy as others. It’s better than no humor at all. As you can see, it got a good amount of shares. You can also use memegenerator.net to glom onto some of the latest and more edgy memes, or even use Photoshop to make it yourself.

2. Create Photo Albums

The World Health Organization’s Women Create Life program aims to improve women’s rights internationally. One way they do this is by creating great photo posts or great photo albums like the one below.
In the last month, out of 11 posts the organization created, three of the top four most-viewed posts were photo albums. Photo albums show one big photo and several smaller ones. They look different from other posts in people’s news feeds, so they get attention. People click in to see all the photos. This gives you an advantage over all the other people and pages you’re competing with for your fans’ attention. Also, although Facebook hasn’t confirmed this, clicks on links or into photo albums probably impact EdgeRank to some degree.

3. Write More Text

Women Create Life takes a magazine approach to its posts. The organization doesn’t use a separate website. Instead, they put all their text into the posts. Sometimes that's as much as 800 words (the current limit is 5,000 characters).
As a result, there is always a “see more” link to click to read the rest of the text. Women Create Life also added a Spanish translation at the end of each post. According to Facebook, clicks on “see more” are counted as a consumption under the “other consumptions” category.
Again, this may feed into EdgeRank, although Facebook has not confirmed it. Either way, this approach also helps followers to see you've put significant time into your posts, which can lead to more shares.

4. Push Your Network to New Posts

Can you front-load engagement to convince the news feed algorithm to show the post to a larger audience? It's hard to say how much impact doing this would have, but here’s how you do it:

• 1. Go to the photos section of your Facebook page and upload an image.
• 2. There is a "post" button at the bottom, but you can change the album name and just exit the tab once it has uploaded the image.
• 3. Go back to photos, you'll see the image there.
• 4. Copy the photo URL, or look for the URL they give you on the album page.
• 5. Promote the album and/or photo via Twitter, email, LinkedIn, and any other distribution networks you have in place.
• 6. Take this even further by spending some money on the post. Either promote the post directly, or create a sponsored story in your Facebook ads to increase visibility and likes early on. After you have some likes and comments, post it out to your news feed, too. To do that just go to the album and upload a new image, and it will prompt you to post out.
  If you keep adding a new image, it lets you publish each time. So seed the album with two photos, promote, then add more, then publish. Because you start off with extra engagement, it spikes the post. If you leverage your entire distribution network, this may increase your reach. The more people interact with a post, the more of your fans Facebook shows it to. Every post has a lifespan, and you have more posts you want to get out, so getting more engagement early is key.
  

  5. Use Post Targeting

  The new post-targeting feature, still being rolled out to all Facebook pages, allows you to segment your fans by criteria previously only available to advertisers. This includes age, gender, interested in (likes), relationship status, all education information, workplace, plus the old options like language, country, state, and city.
  You can use post-targeting to your advantage in a couple of ways. First, you can target a post to the segments of your fans most likely to interact with it. The more tarted you get, the fewer people you'll reach, but a higher percentage of the people you do reach will engage. If there’s someone who wasn’t that into your page, but really likes the topic you posted on, and ten of their friends comment on a particular post that hits that interest or demographic, then EdgeRank shows your page to that person. It’s like a snowball that picks up momentum and just keeps rolling because it’s so concentrated.
  Second, you can divide your audience up and release multiple posts at one time. This content customization increases your chance of getting more people in each fan subgroup to see and engage with your posts.