1. Set Up Your Goals

What do you want to achieve from your campaign? If you want to direct traffic to your website, what should success look like? A newsletter sign-up? A purchased product? If you want to send traffic to your Facebook Page, is your goal to convert page visitors into fans?

2. Outline Your Ad Campaign Plan

Set up a formal campaign that outlines different types of ads that you can split test. Split testing involves changing one piece of the ad, such as the photo, and keeping the other elements the same to see which ad performs better. Rotate your ads every couple of days to keep them fresh. No one wants to see the same ad over and over.

3. Decide Who to Target

Research targeting options before running the ad. Watch how the Estimated Reach and the Suggested Bid changes as you add different targets. Optimize your bid price and reach to get the best price. Let’s review some of Facebook’s targeting options:

LOCATION

You can target by country, state, city, and even zip code.

AGE

You can choose a range or no upper bound maximum. Facebook gives you the option to require an exact match within an age range if you select the ‘Require Exact Age Match’ box. This means that if a user turned 51 yesterday, that user will not be shown the ad for which you selected the age range of 25 to 50.

However, it’s better not to require an exact match, because Facebook will give you a “discounted bid” for people who click your ad who are slightly outside the range (although Facebook does not provide an exact idea of “slightly,” and it doesn’t specify its definition of “discounted bid”).

INTERESTS

Interests are displayed in a person’s profile and are drawn from the keywords used in their information. When you start typing, you may notice the # symbol next to some words. Facebook refers to this as “topic targeting.” For example, there may be many pages or interests around the term “bicycle,” and by selecting #bicycle, you are including all of them so you don’t have to individually select each one. If you want the specific term and not a broader match, choose the term without the # symbol in front. You can also click the ‘Switch to Broad Category Targeting’ link to use a broader range of general terms to target, such as “Outdoor Fitness Activities.”

CONNECTIONS ON FACEBOOK

The radio button is defaulted to “anyone,” but you can choose to include or exclude fans of the Facebook Pages you are the admin of.

ADVANCED DEMOGRAPHICS

Many of these selections will limit your audience heavily, so only choose these options if you have a very specific purpose.

4. Define the Budget

Decide how much you are going to spend per day and for the whole campaign. When you choose your daily budget, your ad will automatically shut off when that budget is reached. You can also run the campaign for a certain amount of time–three days, five days, etc.–so you don’t have to worry about your campaign exceeding your budget.

On the bid, we suggest bidding in the middle of the ‘Suggested Bid’ range or higher. If you bid too low, your ad won’t show up. If your ad gets more clicks, you will be rewarded with a lower click price. Give your ad the best chance to get more clicks by bidding high.

Research what other ads are in Facebook’s rotation. These are only going to be the ads that your Facebook profile qualifies for viewing, so it’s not a complete list. But it’s good to see what other users are doing.

5. Track Your Progress

Know which metrics you must watch to determine if your ads are successful. Make sure you know how to determine if the lead or sale came from the Facebook ad versus other traffic. Trackable links, special coupon codes, and custom landing pages are great options to track leads and sales.

Now that you are driving all this traffic to your website, make sure you are measuring it. Hopefully, you have some tools to measure where your website traffic comes from and what terms people are using to find you. HubSpot’s software, for instance, includes an analytics tool that gives you exactly this information. It tells you not only where your traffic is coming from, but also how effectively these visits turn into leads and customers.

Google Analytics is another great tool for in-depth analysis. If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website, it isn’t hard to do. Using an analytics software, you can drill down into the Facebook statistics and see what is working and what isn’t.

As you can guess, there are some social media best practices that can be applied across all social networks. Consider the following questions when publishing any social media update, whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn.

• Have I included keywords? Search engines are taking cues from social media more and more, making it increasingly important to include appropriate keywords for your business and industry in your social media updates. This will make them even more searchable and help people find you and your content in search engines.
• Am I being engaging? Sure, social media is an awesome platform to promote your content and offers, but you also need to be social. Allocate some of the posts you publish purely to engaging with your fans and followers. Ask questions, respond to their comments, and stay involved.
• Am I including lead generation content? As a marketer, you need to prove the ROI of your social media engagement. If you’re not actively sprinkling in your lead generation content like webinars, downloadable ebooks, and other offers, you’ll surely miss the mark.
• Is my update valuable to my target audience? Every update you publish should provide value to the audience you want to reach. Don’t waste you and your fans/followers’ time with useless information. Share information that informs, engages, interests, and educates your target customer.
• Am I posting frequently enough? You need to make sure you’re regularly engaging your fans and followers with fresh content on a regular basis, or they won’t have a reason to come back and visit your account often. Acceptable posting frequency can vary from social network to social network. For example, you’ll find that you can get away with posting more on Twitter than on Facebook, given the shorter lifespan of a tweet compared to a Facebook post.

1. Not posting consistently. Many marketers rushed to set up Google+ business pages for their company, but as marketers tend to do, they got busy. Many posted a few times in the first week, and then went silent. Maybe they came back and posted two or three times in a day, and then went silent for another week or two. This publishing inconsistency throws followers for a loop and prevents you from building momentum. Short bursts of publishing quickly loses steam. Google+ business pages are still young; if you’re going to make an attempt to leverage it for marketing, give it more time and dedicate yourself to regularly publishing fresh content.
2. Poor use of photos. Google+ business pages are a phenomenal platform for sharing photos, and there are a few best practices for leveraging your photo sharing there. First, provide a mix of text and photo updates; only posting text doesn’t leverage the awesome Google+ photo display capabilities that improve the visitor’s experience. Second, be sure you’ve uploaded a profile picture that relates to your company, otherwise visitors won’t be sure they’ve reached the right Google+ business page. Third, don’t post boring pictures! You know who is doing this? Believe it or not, Google+.
   Instead of pictures of the page moderators, fun cartoons, or snapshots into Google HQ, we see brand icons that provide little value and no entertainment.
3. Not applying for Direct Connect. If you don’t register for Direct Connect, you won’t be eligible to get found in SERPs and added to searchers’ Circles simply by querying +YourName, nor will your Google+ business page posts appear in search engine results. This will impede not just the growth of your social media followers, but your SEO, too.
4. Not using recommended links. Recommended links can be found on the ‘About’ section of a Google+ business page, and it allows you to drive traffic to your website and generate leads from landing pages. Google+ business pages also provide a field for your website URL. Not using these fields is a missed opportunity for your business, plain and simple.
5. Vague personal taglines. The personal tagline should succinctly and clearly describe who you are. This is particularly important to help followers avoid confusion if you are a popular brand or a company with a popular name that many other businesses may have. For an example, let’s take a look at the first result returned when performing a search for Facebook on Google+.
   Look at that page! Their follower number is in the high thousands, they’re posting really interesting content every day, engagement is high, and their photos are very high quality. This looks like Facebook’s Google+ business page. But wait…check out that tagline: “facebook community on google+.” Is this the official Facebook page? Frankly, it’s pretty unclear. The page is maintained so well that it certainly could be, but the tagline seems to indicate otherwise. Don’t put your followers through this confusion; make it blatantly obvious in the tagline.
6. Not verifying your page with Google+. Verifying your page with Google+ helps establish a connection between your Google+ page and your website, mitigating the possibility that someone will make a copycat page around your brand name. It also gives you preference in search results on Google and Google+ if you are approved for Direct Connect. If you haven’t verified your page yet, Virante has written a detailed blog post on how to go through the verification process.
7. Not leveraging Circles to segment your followers. Circles is one of the features unique to Google+ business pages that made lots of people want to jump on the bandwagon. Instead of talking to your entire follower base, you can put people into Circles that let you target communications better. Time magazine is an example of a business that is segmenting Google+ circles well, creating topic Circles so readers only hear about the content that interests them. Circles are also an excellent solution for international businesses or businesses with an international base that frequently communicate with customers in multiple languages.

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Yesterday, Marketing Pilgrim reported data from Altimeter Group that the average large company has 178 corporate-owned social media accounts.

Wait, what?

Who is setting up all of these accounts? How are there even Twitter handles left to go around anymore? Large companies with all the social media accounts, can you please explain yourselves?

So what’s going on here? Do large corporations really have a need for that many social media accounts? Let’s break down the reasons (some legitimate, some not) large companies are bombarding the social media world with their brands.

Why it Might Be Happening (And Actually Makes Sense)

People are claiming accounts in anticipation for future use. This makes sense if you’re planning for things like product launches or expansion to other cities and countries. In fact, that’s probably a common occurrence for larger companies, and is a social media best practice.

Why it Might Be Happening (But Makes No Sense)

Like Marketing Pilgrim points out, maybe these businesses are creating accounts for specific campaigns. If you’re like Geico and have such long-running campaigns as the Geico Gecko and the Geico Caveman (they’ve been going strong since 1999 and 2004, respectively), the separate social media accounts are certainly warranted.

• Not using the social media accounts you set up. When someone sees an abandoned social media business account, it basically just looks like that company doesn’t have its $%*! together. It’s even more important to keep those accounts up to date if you’re linking to them from your website and blog. Don’t just set it and forget it. If you’re going to have an account on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+, put the effort into keeping it engaging and regularly updated with content.
• Not linking back to your website in social media profiles. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+ all allow you to link back to your website. Not only is that five more links into your site, it’s five more ways your hundreds or thousands of followers can get back to your site to find more information about your products and services.
• Not claiming your accounts. Twitter handles get snatched up like wildfire, especially if your company name is somewhat common. And if you’re a big brand name, you don’t want to see Bank of America’s Google+ snafu happen to you. If you don’t claim your name on social networks, you miss out on good opportunities to rank for keywords in organic search, risk running into brand and PR issues, and end up having to compromise the name you select.
• Not separating your business accounts and personal accounts. Companies that do this are not only building a disjointed brand experience, they’re not making the most of their company’s online presence. Public business accounts can return results in search engines and publish content tailored specifically to customers and prospects. Furthermore, they make for a clean, forward-facing and identifiable social media presence for your business.
• Not explicitly asking someone to engage with your content. HubSpot Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella has found the phrase “please retweet” to be the 11th most retweetable phrase. In addition, asking someone to ‘like,’ according to Momentus Media, increases interaction by 216%. (The words most successful at eliciting engagement are depicted here by Mashable.) If you want someone to like, comment, retweet, or watch, just ask.
• Not including a picture. It seems basic, but when your account shows up without a photo on a social network, it looks abandoned and unofficial. Social media is designed to be personal, so including a profile picture, whether of a person or a logo, will automatically give your profile some life. And in case there’s any doubt, Twitter accounts with a picture have 10 times more followers than those without one.
• Not having a blog subscription and RSS feed set up. A subscription field on your blog is an easy way to build an opt-in database for lead nurturing, and an RSS feed will get you repeat visitors to your site that will help build your blog a loyal following.
• Not having social media follow and share buttons on your website. Buttons for all the social media accounts you use regularly should be included on your homepage and next to every piece of content you write, especially your blog. For example, HubSpot customer Pharmacy Development Services includes buttons to visit their pages and profiles on the right, and offers links to +1 the blog article and share it on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on every article it publishes.social media sharing
• Not including links in your tweets. A retweet is great, but a click is better. If you don’t include links in your tweets, you’re not driving new traffic to your site with your social media reach. For the highest click-through rate, place your link 25% of the way into your tweet.
• Not posting updates with context. Instead of just throwing up a link to a blog post, include some commentary describing what’s interesting about it. Momentus Media found that lengthy status updates show higher interaction rates than shorter ones, measuring from 1 to 450 characters and seeing higher interaction rates the higher the character count. Zarrella found similar findings on Twitter, where the most clicks were received on tweets up to 130 characters.

1. Not being where your target customers are. It’s not important to maintain a presence on just any social media network in order to engage with potential and current consumers; you have to be where they actually are. If you are posting content and updates blindly to Twitter, but members of your target market aren’t present there, what’s the point? The first step in effective use of social media for lead generation is to research and determine which social media sites your target audience is active on a regular basis. That way when you do share content and information, you can know you’re working to build awareness for your blog, product, service, and other types of content you offer on a regular basis. Awareness is a key preliminary stepping stone for lead generation, since prospects likely go through a period of learning more about your business and deciding whether or not they should research your company further.
2. Not providing valuable content. If you’re just pushing out content about your product and why it’s so “awesome,” more than likely, people will not want to share or engage with it. If someone is following your brand on Facebook, it’s probably to see what valuable content and offers you can offer them. Rather than product-focused content, focus on content rich with tips and tricks which can help to relieve your target customers’ pain points. When you target the content you’re offering to the different marketing personas you have defined for your business, then your prospects will be much more likely to engage with your brand and therefore, more likely to complete a lead-capture form for a piece of your content. In short, providing targeted, useful content will help you generate more qualified leads who may genuinely be interested in what you have to offer.
3. Not using calls-to-action or sharing targeted links to landing pages. I could have sworn the most effective use of social media for lead gen is the ability to share links to your content, blog, and cool offers? Don’t just say you have a great blog or that your fans should check out your awesome new ebook, link to it, and use an enticing call-to-action to do so. You’d be surprised how commonly businesses neglect to do this. Furthermore, share targeted links. Don’t talk about how your followers should register for your upcoming webinar and link to your website’s homepage that has no mention of the webinar. Instead, link to a targeted landing page where visitors to register. Even better, target specific content to different platforms.
4. Not leveraging social media real estate. When people visit your pages on social sites, they probably want to learn more about your brand and its offerings. On Facebook, you can provide as many links as you would like in the Info section. On Twitter, you can use the short bio to share a link that is integral to your service. Same with LinkedIn, Google+, and other platforms you may be a part of. Use that real estate wisely; it’s there for a reason. While social media is a great platform to help you generate leads, you still want to create a connection between the educational content your prospects are downloading and the recognition that your business does more than give out free stuff. Make sure you’re effectively leveraging the real estate of your social media accounts to create that brand and product awareness, too.
5. Not integrating email and social media. Email marketing and social media are great friends, not enemies. They work together well, help each other out to promote content, and share one another’s information on a regular and consistent basis. You should promote your presence on social media sites through buttons on each email as well as share links to email opt-in forms for social followers to sign up to be a part of your email database. When you combine the power of your lead generation tools, you’ll create a more strategic effort and a better chance of reaching and nurturing your potential customers through multiple fronts, allowing them to choose how they engage with you, consume information, and decide if they would like to move further down the sales cycle.
6. Not displaying highly visible social share and follow buttons. So you have your website and blog and all this great content, but can people easily share it? Be sure to place easy-to-see and -use share and follow buttons on all your content in order to increase its reach. The more your fans share your content with their networks, the more potential new leads will see it!
7. Not analyzing the effectiveness of your social media efforts. You may be on the latest and great social platforms, sharing awesome content, listening and engaging with your potential audience, and collecting that valuable lead information, but how do you determine if it’s working as well as you want it to? You should be regularly analyzing how much traffic and leads you’re generating from each social platform you’re participating in as well as how valuable it is. This will allow your team to evaluate its efforts and make adjustments if needed. For instance, you may want to spend more time engaging the community that tends to convert into more qualified leads. Or perhaps you’ve discovered that Facebook fans prefer different types of offers than Twitter followers. Use this data to perfect your future lead gen efforts in social media to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

It’s very difficult to find many examples of companies using LinkedIn Company Pages to their fullest potential. This a huge missed opportunity for businesses, especially given that because many businesses aren’t leveraging features likes company updates, the clutter on LinkedIn is significantly less dense than on other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. This means that a business that takes advantage of company updates and other page features can leverage a great opportunity to stand out from its competitors.

1. It Has No Followers
   As with any social media presence, building up a solid base of followers is key. Before company updates became a LinkedIn feature, followers were practically useless. Now, without followers, your company updates will be useless.
2. It’s Completely Bare
   Good luck attracting new LinkedIn company followers with a blank, boring page. At the very least, your page should include basic information about your company. Be sure to edit your page overview, complete your profile, and fine-tune your company description.
3. You’re Not Using Company Updates to Share Content
   As we mentioned earlier, it’s astounding how many company pages aren’t leveraging company updates yet, considering it’s arguably the most critical marketing component of a company page. Enable company updates for your page and start sharing useful information and content; interesting discussion topics; and any other company updates you want to share with your followers.
4. You Have No Products/Services Tab
   If you’re a business that offers products/services (and what business doesn’t?), there’s no reason you shouldn’t feature them in your ‘Products’ tab. You can even get creative with this by featuring things other than just your products/services like webinar and ebook offers. There’s nothing wrong with thinking outside the box, and doing so can help you generate valuable leads from your LinkedIn company presence!
5. You’re Not Creating Targeted Product Tabs
   Did you know that you can create targeted content within your Products tab that targets different audiences and features different products? Smart LinkedIn Company Pages are leveraging this feature to personalize messaging on their Products tab, and you should, too. Just click “Create New Audience” while in edit mode on your Products tab, and follow the wizard to specify and define your audience in terms of things like company size, job function, industry, seniority, and geography.
6. It Features No Recommendations
   Displaying testimonials is a great way to show third-party validation and, as a result, credibility for your products/services. On LinkedIn, testimonials translate to ‘Recommendations.’ On your Products tab, page visitors have the opportunity to recommend individual products and services, and a tab rich with recommendations is definitely a good thing.
7. You’re Not Leveraging Opportunities for Creativity
   While a LinkedIn Company Page may not be as customizable as, say, a Facebook Page, there are a few things you can do to make your page more engaging for your followers. Leverage the opportunity to highlight specific promotions, incorporate videos (it’s as simple as adding a link to a YouTube video), and leverage an interactive ‘product and service spotlight.
8. 8. You Haven’t Enabled the Blog RSS Feed
   Feature your business’ blog content automatically by adding your business blog’s RSS feed to your company page. This will pull in new posts and feature them on the overview tab of your LinkedIn Company Page. To enable this feature, simply go into edit mode of your page’s ‘Overview’ tab, scroll down, and enter the URL for your blog’s RSS feed.
9. You Haven’t Enabled the News Module
   Easily showcase news mentions of your company from the web on your Company Page. While still in edit mode of your page’s Overview tab, check the bubble, “Share news about my company” under ‘News Module’ at the very bottom of the page.
10. Your Careers Tab is Worthless
    One of most valuable uses of LinkedIn is for job search and recruiting. Leverage your ‘Careers’ tab to promote job opportunities at your company and direct them to your website to apply.
11. You’re Ignoring Your Analytics
    Make use of your LinkedIn Company Page’s built-in analytics tools to measure and improve the effectiveness and performance of your page. LinkedIn’s analytics tools, visible to page administrators as the fourth tab on your page, allow you to track page views and unique visitors on your overall page as well as each individual tab (although keep in mind it doesn’t currently provide analytics on how individually targeted product tab content performs; it only offers analytics on that tab as a whole). LinkedIn also measures how many clicks your products or services have received as well as the number of members following your company.

Maintaining a Facebook presence, as well as participating in other social networks, can be a valuable way for businesses to connect with prospects and customers, share content, and generate leads. But as you’re likely aware, the capability to easily and freely customize a Facebook business page isn’t really there. Unlike your own website, you have to work within Facebook’s individual restrictions and design limitations. This can make it difficult for businesses to achieve a unique presence that stands out from competitors.

But, is it impossible? No. In fact, there are several things you can do to uniquely brand and customize your Facebook page.

1. Claim Your Vanity URL
2. Create a Custom Welcome Page
3. Get Creative With Your Picture
4. Leverage Your Page’s Photo Strip
5. Create Custom Tabs
6. Create Tabs Showcasing Content From Other Channels
7. Customize Your Post Targeting
8. Run a Facebook Contest/Promotion

1. Implement a Like Gate: Like gates are popping up all over Facebook these days, and it’s not difficult to understand why. They’re a great way to convert new likes into leads right off the bat. Use your like gate to initially turn new page visitors into fans. Once they like you, present them with a valuable content offer that they can obtain directly from a form on your page.
2. Share Links to Landing Pages on Your Wall: Amongst the updates and content you share with your fans on your wall, be sure to include a hearty mix of landing page links for lead generating, premium content like ebooks, webinars, and other educational downloads. In addition, make sure any blog posts you share include CTAs within the post.
3. Offer Exclusive Content to Facebook Fans: According to research from ExactTarget, 58% of Facebook users expect exclusive content from business pages. Take advantage of this insight by offering downloadable content that is exclusive only to your Facebook fans. Set up a targeted landing page for this content, and share the link exclusively on your Facebook page. Require that page visitors must like you in order to view your offer to make it even more exclusive. You’ll be generating leads and leveraging the power of exclusivity all at the same time. How’s that for killing two birds with one stone?
4. Use Overlooked Page Real Estate to Promote Offers: There are quite a few places on your Facebook page you’re likely overlooking to promote your offers. What about highlighting your latest offer in your page’s profile picture? Have you added links to offers in your page’s ‘Info’ section? Don’t miss out on these juicy pieces of low-hanging lead gen fruit!
5. Create Custom Page Tabs to Promote Offers: Customization of Facebook pages is tough…but not impossible. Creating custom page tabs are a great way to expand the possibilities of your Facebook page. Consider creating a tab just to highlight your offers. You can use it one to aggregate some of your best-performing offers, or maybe just promote your newest offer or promotion on a rotating basis.
6. Create Product/Service Awareness: While it’s always a bad idea to be overly self-promotional in your social media efforts, you also want to make sure that your fans are aware of your products/services. Sure, they might keep coming back to you again and again because you offer engaging conversation and valuable content, but if they don’t even know what you sell, you’re not doing your job. Make sure your page clearly communicates what your business sells, and use your lead gen offers to support that with content that aligns with your product/service offerings. This will help spark a connection between your content and your product.