Eric Samson says, “On October 28, 2013, Forrester analyst Nate Elliott wrote, “Facebook is failing marketers.” The open letter, addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, lamented brands’ paltry organic reach across the platform and Facebook’s subpar advertising offerings. That was nearly a year and a half ago. Since then, Facebook has made marked improvements to its News Feed, which users visit to discover events, happenings and stories that matter to them. It weeded out click-bait, enabled better advertising, added emphasis to trending stories and ‘like’ signals, and, more recently, minimized... [...]

Ross Carrel has been busy investigating improvements in marketing through social media. He has come up with software called Social Post Pilot that can save you a lot of time and effort in your social media promotion of your products or services. 1. It can build fan pages on Facebook on autopilot, for example. 2. It can search for YouTube videos, based on your keywords, drip feed them to your site and then share the on social platforms. 3. It can find images from the web that you can use on your site. It can automatically post them on a schedule you control. 4. It can find products on Amazon, based... [...]

Lisa Furgison says, “Showcasing your products on Facebook just got easier. The social media site just launchedProduct Ads. What makes these ads different than other Facebook ads? Two things. First, they come with advanced targeting methods. You can get your ad in front of the right audience with a few clicks. Second, Product Ads allow you to show customers more than one product per ad. You no longer have to pick one product or service and hope that it resonates with your audience. Now, you can showcase several products. This new advertising option has been in the testing phases for months, but... [...]

Ginny Soskey says, “When people arrive at your Facebook Page, where do you think they first look? I’ll give you some hints. It’s a visual piece of content that sits at the top of your page. Its dimensions are 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. It takes up almost a quarter of the screen on most desktop browsers. That’s right — it’s your Facebook cover photo. Since it’s one of the most noticeable parts of your page, it’s crucial that you follow Facebook cover photo best practices. Whether you’re using Facebook to generate leads, close your... [...]

Todd Wasserman says, “Facebook now has 2 million active advertisers, a figure the company included in an announcement for its new mobile app “Ads Manager.” For Facebook, the number is a moving target. Six months ago, the social network boasted 1.5 million active advertisers, meaning they had advertised within the last month. Eighteen months ago, Facebook had 1 million active advertisers. SEE ALSO: 3 Tips for Creating Your Business’ Facebook Page Still, those figures are a fraction of the 30 million businesses around the world that have Facebook Pages. The majority of the... [...]

Morgan Chessman says, “Building marketing strategies for small businesses is one of my favorite things. In my first marketing role, I worked in the marketing department for a small company before moving on to Distilled, where I’ve been lucky enough to continue working with small businesses that have enormous potential. Despite the various industries, locales, and personalities, one of the prevailing similarities between them is that small businesses often don’t position their company or use the web as effectively as they could. While this is partially due to the time and resource... [...]

Dawn Ellis says, “We are living in the social age; where we all have the power and the potential to have our opinions heard by millions. With every social post you distribute, you’re actively impacting your image and contributing to your social print. There are thousands of articles online promoting what should be included in your social media strategy, but what about the methods you shouldn’t be doing? Surprisingly, the methods which are the most common are usually the most feeble and harmful. If You Don’t Share This Post in the Next Three Seconds… The goal of your social... [...]

Lara O’Reilly says, “Facebook’s VP of product Chris Cox has admitted its proposed revenue share deal with publishers, where it is encouraging them to upload articles to its mobile apps direct, has been met with some challenges. Speaking at Re/code’s Code/Media conference in California on Tuesday, Cox said Facebook was “early in conversations” with publishers over the initiative. When asked by Re/code’s Peter Kafka what publishers’ main concerns were during these discussions, he said a “lack of control.” Facebook first embarked in its... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about Facebook. Facebook has been growing massively. It sends out a tremendous amount of traffic, and as a result, more and more of us in the field of web marketing as a whole, and because it’s so interesting as a correlated factor with things that tend to perform well in Google, are interested in the traffic that Facebook can drive and in potentially growing that. So I’m going to start out with a few stats. I think it is actually very important... [...]

Greg Finn says, “For the longest time, the served impression has ruled the land of online advertisers. In this format an impression is counted whenever an ad has been fired, whether or not the served ad has been viewed. Today, Facebook has released an in-depth post as to why this isn’t the best way for advertisers to track their ad dollars. Why? Because “if an ad is viewed it has a greater chance to drive value for an advertiser.” The viewability metric that Facebook prefers are ‘viewed impressions.’ With this metric, advertisers are only charged when an ad (or any part of an ad)... [...]