If you ever questioned the importance of using Facebook for your business, consider than 51% of consumers are more likely to buy a product brand after Liking them on FB. Even more interesting is the fact that on average 53% of people follow a business vs. 32% who follow a celebrity. Wow! Does that mean your Facebook page is more popular than Lady Gaga’s? Well, no. But it does mean that your business can’t ignore Facebook as a integral part of your online marketing and social media efforts.

So how do you capture a couple of the 100,000,000 Page Likes that happen every day? Chris Luo, head of global small business marketing at Facebook recently shared 10 tips to accelerate fan growth with Facebook ads. This is part 2 of the Facebook Small Business webinar series that focuses on how to use Facebook for business.

10 Tips to Accelerate Your Fan Growth with Facebook Ads:

1. Indentify Your Audience – Facebook has powerful targeting options. Who of the 900 million people that visit FB every month do you want to reach? Don’t miss the opportunity to target several different types of audiences that could impact your business.
2. Understand Your Target Options – I think we all knew that you can target by geography (city, state, country, zip code) and by demographics (gender, language, education, status). But, did you know that you can target by job title and workplace? This gives you the ability to focus on particular companies or positions. You can also target people by the likes and interests they’ve set (tv shows, movies, politics, religion, music, books, hobbies). For job titles and workplace, just type them into “Precise Interests.” Chris suggested not to have targets below 10,000 to 25,000 in the reach of your ad.
3. Use Good Images – Use bold colors. Maybe don’t use blue as the predominant color since so much of FB’s background is blue. Test different color strategies and see which ones have the best conversion rates.
4. Include a Strong Call-to-Action – Give people a reason to click through. Spark their interest. Use catchy copy.
5. Set Objectives & Budget – There is a new updated creative flow that is being rolled out. If your objective is to get Likes, you won’t need to bid and optimize, Facebook will do it for you. If your objective is to get Clicks, you’ll have a choice to set the CPC (although FB recommends staying within their suggested range). If you don’t have this option screen available yet, be looking for it soon.
6. Set Up Multiple Campaigns / Ads – 4 or more campaigns at the minimum are suggested. Set up different campaigns targeting different users, different age groups, and different demographics.
7. Launch & Find Out Which Ones Are Working For You – Be sure and monitor your results. If you’re not watching your analytics and reporting, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not.
8. Reporting & Optimization – Use advanced report types to pull information on advertising performance and responder demographics.
9. Refresh Your Ads – Chris suggested swapping out ads every week and get rid of the low converters. You want your ads to be fresh and relevant, so change them often.
10. Always On-Strategy – Develop a strategy and be consistent. Keep your ads running. According to FB’s data, businesses are building bigger fan bases with ads than with passively sitting by and waiting for fans to join.

Now of course, Facebook wants you to keep your ads running all the time. That’s where they are making their money, after all. But, I will have to say that I’m seeing clients who are building large fan bases with Facebook ads and these fans are converting to customers.

Remember that once you get all these fans, you need to give them a reason to stick around and share your information with their friends. Write relevant, interesting content. Help your fans solve a problem. Give them ideas on how to use your product. Have fun with it and let your personality shine through.

For more information on Facebook marketing for small business, read our blog post on Facebook Timeline for Business Tips & Tricks.

Jim Joseph Author of The Experience Effect

Today I went to Bootcamp. Small Business Bootcamp that is, with Jim Joseph, author of The Experience Effect for Small Business and President of Cohn & Wolfe North America. The focus was how to build a brand customers love. Jim took his popular class from NYU and boiled it down to the basics of building a brand experience that will make people want to spend money with your company.

1 – Define your brand. Know who you are and what business you are best suited to own. Don’t go into retail if you’re not a people person. Make sure your interests and skills play to the business you’ve chosen. Define who your best customer is and why they are your best customer. Every small business must learn that there are some customers you just don’t want or need. Creating a profile of the best customers give you a guideline to follow on where to find more of them. Ask yourself what gaps in the market place can you make money on? There’s big money in niches if you can find the right one.

2 – Get to know your customer. What are their interests? Where do they spend their time? What web sites do they frequent? What do they read? The more you know about your customer, the more you can tailor your products and services to them. What problems do they have that you can solve? What moves them?

3 – Emotional benefit. What motivates your customer to deal with you? What makes you different in the way you do business or in the services you offer. You want your customers to connect with you. Build the experience for your customers that make them want to purchase from you.

4 – Competition. Watch the competition and what they are doing. Keep track of their ads, offers, sales, etc. Don’t miss a competitor because their not your neighbor down the street. The internet positions many more companies to be our competition than just those that are local. Be aware of how their offers are impacting your customer base.

5 – Positioning. What do you want your customers to think about you? Position yourself in places that the competition has missed.

6 – Touchpoints. There are many places today where we can be seen by customers (website, print magazine, social media, billboards, tv, email, etc.). Which methods of advertising and marketing allow you to truly reach the customer and tailor a message directly to them? Here’s where knowing your customer and how they live their life really becomes important.

7 – Consistency. To be the brand that people consciously choose day in and day out, you need to be on top of your customer service game all the time. Your customers need to have a stellar experience every time they do business with you. You need to be memorable.

As Jim Joseph advised, be a benchmark. Have your small business be the trend setter. If you can stand apart from the crowd, you’ll have crowds clambering to do business with you.

Check out Jim Joseph’s book, “The Small Business Effect for Small Business”

Mark Garrison of Marketplace.org reported Monday that AT&T sold its majority stake of its business directory unit (aka the Yellow Pages) to private equity firm Cerberus for $750 million. Seriously though…what is Cerberus thinking? Even though AT&T’s Yellow Pages brought in $3.3 billion last year, it was losing money to online sites like Google, Yelp and Groupon. Why would anyone pay for a passe business model that is steadily declining in sales each year.

According to Charles McGill of NYU’s business school, private equity firms like Cerberus don’t have the same pressure to grow each quarter, unlike AT&T where quarterly earnings are all important. Cerberus said it’s plans were to to try to grow the online business.

Does your business still utilize printed Yellow Pages advertising? Have you seen a declining return on investment from print vs. online advertising? Let us know your experience.

Obama knows what we in the internet marketing world have known for some time. Online marketing is a necessity in 21st century, and in many cases, has a much better return on investment than traditional advertising in the newspaper, on the radio, and with direct mail. Tim Lin of Precision, an ad firm that works with Democratic campaigns, said, “If you’re not advertising online, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of people and an ability to influence them.”

In particular, the Obama campaign is using pay-per-click advertising with Google Adwords. They have purchased keywords including “immigration reform,” “Dream Act,” ”Warren Buffett,” “Obama singing,” “Obama birthday,” and for basketball fans, “Obama bracket.” But Obama isn’t the only presidential candidate purchasing pay-per-click advertising. According to the Associated Press, Mitt Romney reportedly purchased his late father’s name, George W. Romney, who had been in contention for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. Rick Santorum has purchased the keyword “Rush Limbaugh,” according to Hitwise. You can see a visual representation of the keywords purchased by the 2012 presidential campaigns on The Washington Post’s website.

The Washington Post article also stated that the president’s campaign is “using technology that can track and target people based on the web sites they’ve been browsing.” Hmm.. possibly the Obama camp is not only utilizing Google Adwords for search campaigns but also for display advertising? With display advertising they could target specific websites where they felt their potential supporters were visiting and spending time online.

It just may be that the winner in the race for the White House will be the candidate who has the best internet marketing strategy. It will be very interesting to see the results in November. What do you think of the use of internet marketing in the presidential race?

I made a conscious decision to wait to the last minute to implement Timeline on The URL Dr.’s Facebook page. I played around with all the new features over the weekend and found that a big thumbs up was warranted. I really like the way Timeline looks and the new features FB has introduced. My enjoyment in creating a new look and feel for Timeline only proves to me that I really need to get out more.

If you’re still trying to figure everything out, watch the accompanying video from Facebook that gives a great run down of all the new features.

Here’s a summary of the most important new Timeline features and how to use them:

Cover Photo

• What is It: The large image at the top of the page.
• Size: 851 x 315
• How to Use It: Choose a picture that really says who and what you are. Don’t include pricing or purchasing info, contact info, references to Facebook features or actions and calls-to-action.

Profile Picture

• What is It: The square image underneath the Cover Photo on the left side of the page. It’s also the image that is shown when you post an update to your wall, in users’ news feed and in sponsored stories ads.
• Size: 180 x 180
• How to Use It: Good for a logo. Remember when its shown in thumbnail size in your posts it shrinks to 32 x 32. Use an image that can be seen in both sizes.

 Views & Apps

• What is It: Under your Cover Photo is a list of apps, photos, and likes. 4 are visable from the page, but it expands to a max of 12.
• Size: 111 x 74
• How to Use It: You can change the images by expanding the view to see all of your views & apps. Hover over each one, click on the pencil and choose Edit Settings. You can also change the order in which they appear, although Photos is always first. You can use these as a call-to-action, to advertise a product or offer, to show your blog or video channel, etc. Be creative here.

New Feature – Highlight Stories

• What is It: Make Stories wider.
• How to Use It: Hover over the story and you can make the story expand across the full width of the page. Highlight important stories, posts and events. You can also star it with the star icon.

New Feature – Pin a Story

• What is It: Pins a story to the top of your page.
• How to Use it: Hover over a story, click the pencil, choose Pin To Top. It pins the story to the top of your Timeline and stays there for seven days. Highlight important posts or offers that you want everyone to see. Pin a new one every 7 days. Use calls-to-actions in these.

New Feature – Messages

• What is It: Private messaging feature.
• How to Use It: Users can now send you private messages.

New Feature – Milestones

• What is It: Milestones in your business.
• Size: 843 x 403
• How to Use it: Highlight your biggest achievements, special events, product introductions, awards you’ve won, fan growth, media stories, etc. It takes up the full width of the page. You can create current and past Milestones.

For several additional worthwhile features, see Mashable’s post on 4 Facebook Features Marketers Can’t Afford to Ignore.

After you get Timeline for your business just the way you want it, keep in mind the need for more frequent posting is increasing. In a few hours you’re old news, especially if you have a large fan base. Also, of note, a report yesterday from Hubspot about Facebook content published through third-party tools is being penalized, resulting in 67% fewer likes. Unfortunately for small business, that means all those great time saving tools like Hoot Suite and Tweet Deck may be out the window, for now, where Facebook is concerned.

Feel free to share a link to your business Facebook Timeline. How do you think Timeline will impact your business?

Nearly 30% of search queries now have local intent, while 1/3 of all mobile searchers have local intent. This traffic is interested in finding you Now, because you’re right around the corner. Why not make it easy for them to find you?

Benu Aggarwal, of Milestone Internet Marketing, has done local marketing programs for over 1,200 clients. She conducted today’s webinar with the message that Google Places must be used as part of an integrated online marketing program. Your message, mainly your company name, address, phone number, and the keywords you use to categorize your business, must be consistent across every part of your online presence.

There are seven factors impacting local search today: on-page optimization, off page (citations and links), reviews, local (Bing and Google), hyper local, social, and mobile. In a competitive market, you must be actively participating in each of the seven areas to have the largest impact on your local search placement.

One specific area that tends to confuse small business owners is review sites and citations. Reviews and citations have become an integral part of getting your local search results to the top of the heap. But, your market and your location can have an impact on which review site you should concentrate on. Do a search in Google for several keywords that describe the category you do business in. Look at the results that come up. Visit the top sites that are shown with reviews. Where are the majority of the reviews coming from? Narrow your focus to the top review sites appearing. Start sending your customers there and ask them to post a review.

Images have a major impact on local search results. She suggested using Panoramio. Panoramio is a photo sharing community like Flickr, but has surpassed Flickr in importance with Google.

Another helpful hint from Benu was to use the NAP Consistency Tool from Yext to check that your name, address, phone number, and url are consistent across all channels. You can also use this tool to check your competitors as well.

And last but not least, don’t try to scam Google. (They really dislike that and it can get you banned.) Use your exact business name in your Google Places listing. Don’t stuff keywords in the title or the extra address line. Don’t add random categories. Don’t stick your phone number in the PO Box space. And don’t use an 800# as your main phone number, use your local number. If you don’t have a local number, get one.

Great information from start to finish. If you’d like to view the presentation slideshow and read more about this subject, visit Benu’s blog post at http://blog.milestoneinternet.com/education/seomoz-webinar-all-about-google-places/ . Be sure and tell her I told you to stop by.

Have you had any positive or negative experiences with Google Places? I’d love to hear from you.

I started turning ad groups on and thought it was curious that the majority the quality scores were twos. There were a few ones mixed in, as if that were any better. I was used to new campaigns starting out with a quality score of seven, so this was not the norm. I tried increasing some of the bids to see if this would alter the quality scores and it did not. With a quality score of two, my new ads weren’t even running. No client wants to hear their ads aren’t running, they want to see results.

I took a deeper look into the original, paused campaign that was still in the account. In looking at the quality score of the keywords still in the campaign, they were all low twos and threes with a handful of fours. It appeared that in this case, the historical account information was drastically altering the quality score of the new campaign.

Just to double check, I called the support staff at Google and verified that new keywords will inherit a quality score from the historical performance in an account. When no historical information exists, the quality score can initially be determined from the performance of that keyword across the whole market. If it has performed poorly across the board for the majority of Google Adwords customers, it will start out with a low quality score in a new program as well.

I knew that in this case there were good keywords involved that were relevant to the landing pages and were included in the ads. I had segmented like keywords into closely related ad groups. I had used best practices to put the new campaign together. This was not an instance of poorly performing keywords.

Google suggested opening a new Adwords account to see if that fixed the problem. They also suggested increasing the bids to see if that had any effect. The Googler that I talked to said he wouldn’t be surprised if the new account had no effect on the poor quality scores and thought it was more an issue of the bidding being too low.

I opened a new Adwords account and within 10 minutes had quality scores of six and seven, where in the original account, I was still looking at twos for the same keywords. I tried a little experimenting with bids in both accounts, just to see what would happen. In the old account I significantly increased bids on two ad groups. I waited for several hours to see what would happen. It did not increase the quality score on any of the keywords. I tried the same thing in the new account with the same group of keywords. I had increased quality scores by at least one point within ten minutes on a large number of keywords in the ad group.

In the end, I moved all the ad groups and keywords into the new account. The program started generating impressions and click throughs in the first few hours. In conclusion, I would recommend starting a new Adwords account when launching a new campaign where a previous campaign existed that had poor performance.

Have you had a similar experience with quality scores in a new Adwords campaign? Share your thoughts with us.

The first thing I did was list the house myself with an online MLS listing service. For $195, I got the same exposure that my real estate agent did. (Believe me, I checked all the top rated sites before and after. I can verify my MLS listing was everywhere my agent’s MLS listing was.) I researched the top real estate websites and the top for sale by owner websites and started placing ads. Many of these sites don’t charge for the listings. In fact, I only paid for two of them. In addition to the more traditional real estate websites, I also placed ads on Ebay Classifieds and Craig’s List.

Then, I took my keyword research and created a Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaign. I ran two nationwide campaigns with keyword terms very specific to my area. One targeted to PCs and one targeted to mobile devices. I also ran two local campaigns that were geotargeted within a 30 mile radius of my house with keyword terms that were very general to anyone looking for a house for sale. Again, I had one targeted to PCs and one targeted to mobile devices. The traffic for the mobile device campaigns was sent to the mobile website that I designed with Toor.me.

Since I was offering a commission to any agent who brought me a buyer, I wanted to inform the real estate professionals in the area about my home. I sent an email to around 125 agents with information on the house and how they could schedule a showing for their clients. To add a bit of incentive, I offered an iPad, in addition to the regular commission, if anyone brought me a buyer within 30 days.

All the online marketing is being tracked through Google Analytics. This way I can see where visitors to the site are coming from, track what keywords brought them to the site, and calculate a true return on investment by seeing whether or not they filled out an online request showing form. I’ve also asked anyone that called where they found the house.

In our next installment, we’ll discuss how I used social networking to increase the reach of my online marketing campaign. Feel free to leave a comment and let us know what online marketing techniques you’ve used to sell real estate online.

I asked the real estate agent what marketing had been done to move my house. I was disappointed to find out that 5 ads in the local newspaper was the extent of the advertising. Now in all fairness, let’s not forget the For Sale Sign that was pitched in my yard or the two open houses that were held. My agent also told me I was on “hundreds” of websites through the MLS listing. But, seven months later, I’m still sitting in my house.

So I decided to do a little online market research and see exactly where on the internet my house was showing up. I was listed on quite a few websites thanks to the MLS listing, but unfortunately, each real estate website that uses the MLS information picks and chooses what data they display. In many cases the image of my house was resized automatically to fit a preset space and ended up looking distorted and stretched. In my opinion, there really wasn’t a lot of information being given to a prospective buyer to get them interested in my house. I also noticed that my real estate agent hadn’t even filled out his own online profile completely. Instead of his personal image being shown, it was just a stock outline of a human head. What kind of a professional image did this portray?

This was the point that I shook my head and thought that I could do I better job myself. After all, I make my living marketing companies and their products online. Could marketing a house online be that different? Besides, five newspapers ads don’t equal thousands of dollars in commission. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and handle the online marketing of my house myself.

The first thing I did was a bit of keyword research to find out exactly what terms prospective buyers in my market were using in their online searches for homes for sale. From this information I picked two url addresses. One url was a popular keyword search that was relevant to my area. The other url was the street address of the house. The street address was shorter and easier to remember, so that’s the one I used in my advertising and on my signage. I set up the urls for one to redirect to the other, so we didn’t run into any duplicate content issues.

Second, I spent some time creating a real estate website for my house, www.531CumberlandSt.com with WordPress and a template from The URL Dr. Now in all honesty, I may have gone a bit overboard with the website in terms of how many pages it ended up being, but the idea was to get prospective buyers excited about the property so that they would schedule a showing through an online form. I gave more information about the house in the website than was given in the MLS listing. I took a lot of pictures and I also added an optimized video to the site, hosted on YouTube. I included beautiful header images of the local area that Bill Merlavage Photography provided to me. I added a blog where I could talk about what was going on in the neighborhood, community activities, updates we were making to the house, open house information, etc. I also included a link to a local mortgage broker who had special financing offers and a program that offered $5,000 toward the closing costs. I included a page for real estate agents with information on a 4% buyer’s commission I was offering and a form they could fill out to obtain marketing materials on the house.

But I didn’t stop with one website. Creating a real estate website especially for mobile devices was an important part of my online marketing plan. I used Toor.me for a mobile real estate website. Now this may sound like a lot of work but the Toor.me site probably only took 10 minutes to put together and was definitely worth it. The site easily allows you to download a printed bullseye that you can add to your exterior signage and flyers. A prospective buyer can scan the bullseye with their mobile phone and my Toor.me real estate website instantly appears. Talk about curb appeal!

Each of the websites give prospective buyers an easy way to contact me to set up an appointment or ask questions. This is key in creating a real estate website. You must make it easy for an interested buyer to schedule a showing. What is your experience with creating a real estate website? What has worked for you? Give us your comments and stick around for the next chapter in our real estate saga, “Can You Sell Your House Using Online Real Estate Marketing?”

David Meerman Scott in his "Duh, Winning!" t-shirt

This is yet another reason why I love David Meerman Scott. (Again, don’t tell my husband.) Who else would give us a webinar entitled, “Marketing Lessons from Charlie Sheen?” I just got done participating and it was packed with awesome information that any small business owner can use today to improve their online marketing efforts.

David started with a footnote to the webinar that he wasn’t necessarily agreeing with Charlie Sheen’s lifestyle choices. He was looking at his recent efforts to promote himself from a marketing standpoint. There is a method to his madness (Charlie’s madness that is). Let’s face it, we can’t argue that Charlie has received more media lately than one man deserves. But David pointed out several key reasons why. So what can we learn from Charlie?

1. Create great web content. Charlie did a great job with inbound marketing. He has millions reading what he Tweets and watching his self made videos. He’s making web content that people are eating up.
2. Interact in real time. Charlie was able to respond instantly via the web to people’s comments. Speed and agility are a huge competitive advantage for any company. You have to be in a position to capitalize on opportunities, fast.
3. Deliver content that the media will pick up. People in the media are going to Google, YouTube, etc. They are searching. They are paying attention to what happens on the web. They are looking for interesting things to write about. Charlie knew when he posted a video on UStream that the media would find it and watch it.
4. Marketing is a performance. OK. This is my favorite take away. I should remember this from the days in my teens as a candy making entrepreneur. I was cute. I was interesting. I was in everything from People Magazine to USA Today. It’s about performing. (Too bad we didn’t have the internet back then to capitalize on all that real time marketing.) Charlie has turned everything into a performance. Perform and people will watch. (Although a caveat might be to perform appropriately.)
5. Take risks. It’s OK to fail. As your mother always told you, if you don’t try, you won’t get anywhere. Not everything is going to work. How many of us in business have done everything right? None of us. You have to make a choice. Put it out there. See what happens. Adjust accordingly. Charlie’s first night of his tour bombed. He learned from the lesson and made the show better.
6. Measure and improve for winning. Again, learn from your failure. You’ve got to keep track of what is working and what isn’t. Learn from both sides.

Another great presentation by David Meerman Scott. I have got to see this man live. I”ll set that as a goal. Be sure and read my book review of David Meerman Scott’s best seller, The New Rules of Marketing and PR and from his New Rules Social Media Series, Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business. Also, be sure and visit David Meerman Scott’s blog at Web Ink Now.