FORT LAUDERDALE – Once upon a time, email marketing was recognized as the most powerful Internet marketing medium. You could send out a few thousand opt-in emails, wait a few hours and wham – a heap load of online sales. Well, those days are pretty much gone. Most peoples’ inboxes are filled to the brim with offers from every vendor out there — and it seems to be getting worse.

Even today’s most proficient email marketers feel like the prosperous and golden era of email marketing came and left a long time ago. The ISP filters choke our mailings to a disappointing 0.05% delivery rate. It’s no wonder so many of us wanted to threw in the towel and go back to cushy desk jobs.

Internet marketing is not for the faint of Heart. It requires courage! You have to adapt on-the-fly, grow and learn. If you want to compete with large Fortune 500 companies, you still have one powerful option that can work for you, but you have to know how to make it work to benefit your online business.

You don’t have to look too far for this solution. It’s right here. It’s called Facebook.

Facebook is the big elephant in the room with billions of users. That’s billions with a “B”. If you own a business or website, you probably have Fan Page to promote your products or services, but how do you get Fans? You know how daunting it can be to get Facebook Likes to increase brand recognition and reach your target audience. The secret to making Facebook work for your business is simple: create valuable CONTENT, entice your Fans to share this fresh and 100% original content (i.e posts, articles, photos, etc.) with their friends so that you can get more Fans. Marketing experts estimate that it takes a business owner perhaps 6 – 8 impressions of their brand ‘BEFORE’ a prospect feel even slightly compelled to accept your call-to-action: sign up for a DEMO or complete the sale. If that’s really true, how can a small business owner compete with a small ad budget?

In a recent study by Clickbank Analytics, marketing experts estimated that the value of a Facebook Fan at about $175, more or less and give or take depending on the industry. If that’s really true, that’s a lot of money for a small business owner to spend to acquire ONE Facebook Fan.

If you are in a competitive industry, you want your Fan Page to be more popular than your competitors, right? More fans signify that your company has been around longer, loved by more customers and you’re a trustworthy business owner. At least that’s what they teach students at Facebook University!

This might not be 100% true – but that’s how your potential customers think!

If you really want to stand out of the crowd and use your Facebook Fan Page to generate more sales for your business, you need to promote your Fan Page like crazy. The average small business owner can’t afford to pay for Cost per Acquisition fee of $175 per a Facebook Fan. You need to LEVERAGE your marketing dollars by using these Seven Advanced Facebook tactics. The name of the game with Facebook marketing is Fan Engagement Strategies and use Facebook Tools like Audience Insights to leverage every $1 you spend to acquire Facebook Fans.

Once you digest these 7 Powerful Facebook Marketing Tactics, you will know more than 89% of all internet marketers out there when it comes to getting more Facebook Likes for your Fan Page….so let’s begin.

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1. To gain super fast popularity, you need to start a blog. The blogging platform with the deepest market penetration is WordPress. WordPress and Facebook go hand in hand. In fact, Google, WordPress and Facebook is the Triple Threat (more about that later). Google looks for social media signals from Facebook shares that are linked to WordPress blog.  Facebook is obviously the most powerful social media platform right now with over 1.8 Billion active users and creating valuable content and publishing fresh and original blog posts and articles 3 – 4 times a week will build your Facebook Fan base very quickly. The more people reading your blog posts and updates, the more Facebook Shares you will earn and the more social media signals generated for the Google Penguin algorithm. Facebook Likes usually translate into brand recognition and more website sales from the uptick in Fan Likes. These Facebook Fans are “hungry” for fresh content. They are like sponges! Facebook Fans have a never-ending thirst for good content. Feed them what they want!

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2. Post native to Facebook with Life Affirming Inspirational Quotes. Look at the most popular Facebook Fan Pages and they all share inspirational quotes to capture people’s attention and get more Facebook Fans. Internet users have an real affinity for inspirational quotes that they can quickly tap into emotionally, resonate with the core message, apply it to their hectic lives and proceed to their next conquest (i.e. on to Starbucks for their favorite Mocha Latte). We live in an impulse driven society. Most Facebook users check their Live Feeds 3 – 4 times a day or more! They pick Posts liberally for value-added experiences.

3. Log into a popular news site like Daily Mail or download their news app.  Track the most popular articles featuring the Most Comments. Read the Comments and then create posts that Inspire People to Share Your Content based a unique “hook” you discovered in the News Comments that is 100% relevant to your business niche. You are reading the Comments to capture the vibe and prospective of Internet users and how they respond to calamity, adversity and Life in general. This method of writing fresh and original content takes some practice, but it is very effective. This methodology serves as a barometer for gauging what people feel about their position in Life and the direction of society, as a whole. You are writing to tap into their emotional continuity. For example, if you found an article on Daily Mail that revealed people are getting cancer from using the weed killer RoundUP by Monsanto on their house plants and it earned 639+ Comments in just 3 hours — and you work in the “Health and Wellness” niche (i.e. vitamins or homeopathic remedies) — create your next Facebook Post or blog article detailing the efficacy of essential oils for protecting homeowners’ potted plants from bugs. It’s what’s trending at this Moment! When Fans’ review your original content, they will share it — and even better, fans’ friends will share it, appreciate it and “Like” your page. In that Moment, Monsanto is on their minds. In that Moment, they are concerned about the weed killer product in their garage. In a few days, it will be old news. Original content can create a tsunami effect of Facebook Fan Likes. Mari Smith of ShortStack discusses how to tap into Fans’ emotional continuity and relevancy in her 14 different ways to get more Facebook Fans. Stay in the now and use your Facebook posts and blog articles to create a resonance effect with your target audience.

Facebook has a free tool called Audience Insights. You can use it to determine if you should target a specific interest with a Facebook campaign. Running a business is hard enough. Spending money on a general audience ad campaign is not cost effective. You need to focus and target your energies to maximize your leverage on Facebook. For example, if you are marketing personal fitness tapes online and you want to learn more about your potential audience locally, by city or nationwide — you can use Audience Insights to run a report about Facebook users who are interested in “personal fitness” by city and state. You need to target your interest so that you are only pitching your ad to your target audience, the group of Facebook users who are most likely interested in your product or service. Once you are using Audience Insights, ask yourself a few simple questions to match to your desired interest group and then you’ll be able to calculate the cost of reach to your estimated audience size for your ad campaign.

Look Beyond the News Headlines for the Human Element – The Silver Lining!

4. Create your Facebook posts and content around it. You are aiming for the Relevancy Stream of Thought. You are aiming for Resonance with your Facebook Fans and prospective customers. Inspirational Quotes, when delivered in a timely manner will hit the relevancy nail on its head and strike a chord in peoples’ hearts. You need to be relevant, in that given Moment and use your authentic voice! Speak to your Facebook Fans directly to get more shares and Fans. Be consistent with your blog posts by posting new content at least 3 – 4 times a week with value-added experiences your Fans will go crazy for and demand from you time and time again. Your Facebook posts, regardless of whether you are posting native (“direct”) on your Fan Page or via a Facebook Plug-In Widget, you must include a Call to Action and a Sense of Urgency with each post. Offer up-to-the-minute tips while staying true to your niche and offer VALUE, VALUE and more VALUE.

5. The Human Mind is like a sponge. People want to be educated. They want to be entertained. You can do both at the same time and do it consistently. People love to share quick how-to guides from credible sources with their friends on Facebook. It gives them the warm, fuzzy feeling that they are helping to educate someone else. Before you share — ask yourself a simple question, “Will my Fans find value in this content and it is 100% relevant at this Moment?” Right here and right now! In this Moment. It might be great now — and 100% inappropriate next week. The Internet is in a constant state of flux. It’s growing and twisting and bending in all kinds of directions and it’s taking all of us for a ride. Keep your posts short and sweet. A recent study done by Mashable shows that Facebook posts under 40 words get 27% higher engagement than longer ones. Shorter posts tend to perform better. The first step to Facebook success: add value and your desired call-to-action with a sense of urgency!

Plan your Facebook Posts at least 48 hours in advance! Hooks, Angles…. the Works!

6. Your Posts need to be relevant! Relevancy is one of the hot topics according to ShortStack. Post eye-catching photos that solve problems! Optimize, optimize and optimize! You need to optimize your photo posts on Facebook for 403 x 403 pixels to avoid photo edge blunders and bloopers. If you are offering a product or service in a competitive industry, reach out to your fans with a Contest Giveaway. If you sell sportswear online, post a photo of your best selling Air Jordans with a simple question, “Do you remember where you were when you tried on your first pair of Air Jordans?”. Offer a discount or a prize for the most creative Facebook Comments.

Pay close attention to the Comments from your Fans during the Contest. It’s a great opportunity to learn about “what’s happening on the Streets”. Contests entice engagement, gets shares and Facebook Fans and gets the word out quickly about your brand. Contests are amazing brand recognition vehicles for small business owners. The word-of-advertising effect with Contests Giveaways is outstanding.

You need to peak through the window you are trying to open with your Facebook Ads to get a better idea on how to get those 6 – 8 impressions of YOUR BRAND out there at the lowest cost possible. Contest Giveaways can fling that window wide open and show you what your prospects want and how to satisfy their needs.

Hot Facebook Tip: Solve a Problem with a Photo and offer the content in a storytelling format in order to solve the Problem. Solving problems brings the online community and your Fans together. Fans that share ideas with other Fans leads to even more Fans sign on to your Fan Page. It’s a ripple effect. Take it to the next level by telling a story with images and you’ll capture their Imagination. Once you are up and running with a few ad campaigns and you are posting photos with questions and other blurbs to capture the imagination of Facebook users, start using a free tool called Compass. You will be able to run powerful ad reports to see how your Facebook ad campaigns are converting (i.e. cost and conversion analysis, click analysis and much more). Your goal is to find out the actual benchmark performance point of your ad campaign and compare it to other Facebook advertisers.

If you spent $190 last week to get 345 clicks to your Facebook Ad with a local or nationwide reach of 44,000 Facebook users which translates to a Cost-Per-Click (CPC = $0.55), then you have enough benchmark ad data to make a comparison with other Facebook advertisers in your niche. Now you can make the decision on whether your Facebook marketing will convert into sales of your product. It’s all a numbers game! A Compass Ad Report with benchmark data is your best friend. It’s the way for small business owners to gauge the effectiveness of their Facebook Ad Campaigns. If you are spending $0.55 per a click with a reach of 44,000 Facebook users, ask yourself, “Is this ad campaign sustainable and is the CPC cost effective for my budget?” and “is the CPC cost effective for brand recognition or should I use the advertising dollars for email list building instead?”. How much are you are willing to spend to accomplish your marketing objectives? Ultimately, Compass is the tool that helps you address the key issues of your Facebook Marketing Campaign and clarifies the goal of your Facebook ad campaign.

7. Get your Fans to engage with your Posts using “Fill in the Blank” posts. Make your content interactive. Fill in the Blank Facebook posts offer the best opportunity to get more Comments from your Fans and Shares to generate social media signals for a dual Google tsunami effect.  You want your online community and Fan Base to feel like “you’re listening to their concerns and issues” . “Fill in the Blank” posts offer you a superb opportunity to create a “pseudo-plugin” that’s 100% scalable in real-time for getting more Facebook Fans. You will learn instantly about the current needs of your Facebook Fans and what’s on their minds. Interactivity is at the top of Mari Smith’s list of marketing tactics on ShortStack. In fact, it’s her Top 5 method of Facebook Fan engagement. Your fill in the blank posts should be relevant and consistent with a specific event.  For example, if you are a wedding planner and we want to learn more about WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING about the best time of the year to get married — get them engaged with a photo of beautiful mountain range as a backdrop for their wedding reception and use a Fill-in-the-Blank Catchy headline: Getting Married Soon? The month of __________ is a good time for you? Comment and tell us which month is best for you!  Simply use a short sentence with ONE word missing to engage your Fans and tie in a product discount or coupon. Add a Contest Giveaway for their engagement, “Be one of the first 100 people to tell us what’s the best month to get married and get a 15% coupon for a Bridal Gift”. Once they engage with your Content — they want to know too, “What’s the Best Month to Get Married?” Post the Results in a few days on your Facebook Fan Page so that people are able to interact with the “Fill in the Blank” Post and find out for themselves what other brides and grooms out there feel is the best month for their nuptials. Sharing the results gets even more Fans because you can tag the Results Post to a Contest Giveaway. You can also tag the Results Post to the most interactive Fans on your page as a way to recognize them going “above and beyond” your request for more information about wedding planning.

Facebook users want value! They demand it. They log in  3 – 4 times a day for a reason. They want content that’s going to tell a story and help them solve a problem. Engagement with your brand will come from taking a peak at their current needs. You can tell a Story and read the Comments. Share your feedback on their Comments. Reach out to those Fans in the most appropriate way to assist them with their problem. By telling a story, sharing feedback and reaching out with assistance, you can build a loyal following of Facebook Fans while positioning your company to make more sales of your product or service through camaraderie.

You can administer your contests with the Timeline Contest Tool. Run regular contests at least 1 – 2 times a month. Contests such as “like to win” or “fill in the blank” can easily produce 500 – 1000 Fan Page Likes in 7 Days, but with all of the Comments streaming in from everywhere through Fan Page Engagement, it could become an administrative nightmare. Like they say, “Be Careful for What you Wish For!”.  You can use a Facebook Timeline Contest Tool to micromanage every aspect of your contest. If you are planning a photo contest, the Timeline Contest Tool will help you pick the winner with the most likes. If you are promoting your Contest in a quiz format, use the Timeline Contest Tool to select winners among people who answered the quiz correctly. Sweepstakes, one of the most engaging and effective contests online are an administrative blunder without the right tools. The Timeline Contest Tool can randomly pick a winner among people who liked or commented on the post. This tool gives you full transparency and data to learn more about the levels of engagement on your Fan Page.

Don’t be afraid to ask a question in a Facebook post or use a “Fill in the Blank” post to get your target audience to engage with your content. Use questions to get feedback from your Fans and then give a ShoutOut to the most interactive and engaging Fans. In time, your Fan Base will realize that their opinion and comments are important to you and highly relevant on how to create their Fan Page Posts.

Give a ShoutOut to your most engaging fans with original content and show your appreciation for their engagement. Appreciation in the digital landscape promotes brand recognition and gets more Facebook Fans in the long haul. People want to feel like they are appreciated. Your Facebook posts will migrate throughout the social media landscape and generate loads of Facebook Likes; the precursor to business inquiries, brand recognition and hopefully a few sales, which isn’t all that bad after all, right?

Working with other Facebook Fan Pages and forming collaborations with your competitors can be a WIN-WIN situation. Yes, they are your competitors and that’s okay. If you are a part of a Group and agree to collaborate for the betterment of the Facebook Fans in the Group, then each member stands to benefit from the Group Collaboration. You can easily build your own Group of Collaboration as long as each member or small business owner in the Group is willing to work towards the betterment of their Fans. Even though the members of the Group are tried-and-true competitors in every sense of the word in their respective niche, the betterment of the Facebook Fans is tantamount to any other objective. For the Group of Collaboration to work, there must be strict ground rules for administration, even as far as them being dictated by a set of Group by-laws, just as if you were setting up a LLC or C-Corporation. For example, members agree to maintain a 80/20 mix of non-promotional-promotional content when posting to each other’s audience and members agree to post information that is inspirational and free of direct links to product landing pages. “There is a time and place for most things.”

Make sure that you post regularly to your Facebook Fan Page. In a recent study by Mashable, over 30% of Facebook Fan Pages were found to lack recent posts for the last 30 days. It’s almost as if they were suspended in a stagnant mode of disarray. If you’re like most businesses, you probably spent a lot of time and energy to build your Fan Base. Really…if each Fan cost as much as $175 (“more or less”), wouldn’t you want to nurture them and increase brand recognition in hopes of earning their business in the near future. Unless your business is insolvent, there is really no reason why you would allow your Facebook Fan Page to gather dust while your competitors are “actively seeking out” every marketing advantage and angle possible to leverage as much Internet Traffic towards their website or blog through the use of fresh and original content that entices Fans to share.

There are a few statistics you should know about blogging and Facebook Marketing that might surprise you: over 83% of blog visits are new and by posting to your blog every day you will get 4x more leads from Facebook. To get repeat visitors to your blog, you should work on getting more repeat visits with high-quality creative content (i.e. articles, videos and anything that will go viral) that lures your subscribers and social media fans and followers back to your blog. The trick is to harvest more brand impressions with zero acquisition costs (i.e. paying for more media or traffic) with social shares and posting regularly on your blog increases back links and repeat visitors. It’s been proven that blogs that post daily get 4x more traffic than blogs that post weekly or less. As you create more posts and submit your blog articles to directories such as Ezine Articles, you will see a steady rise of organic search engine traffic, especially after you cross the 100-post mark with your blog. Most bloggers experience a huge spike in Organic Leads from Google and other search engines after the 100-post mark. Social media shares increase and search engine algorithms factor in social media credibility for rankings.

According to a recent article on Marketo, longer blog posts with unique story lines (1,500 words or more) get more Facebook Likes and social sharing buzz. Your influence and authority in your field will be determined by your social shares. Quality content and a great blog design coupled with social media shares is the blueprint for increasing your credibility and generating more leads and business.

So, to summarize. Engage your Fans with Photos to Solve a Problem. Use Fill-in-the-Blank Posts to tap into the vibe of your fans. Facebook Fan Page owners who run contests have found that contests are the ultimate call-to-action for getting shares and Fan Page “Likes”. Contests are the perfect call-to-action triggers. You can easily run Contests on your Fan Page and utilize other tips, strategies and tactics to get fans to engage and leave Comments and like their other Fans’ Comments and the Comments of Fans’ Friends.

Each new Fan will help you accomplish your Facebook Fan Page marketing goals!

Each week, set a goal for the number of Facebook Fans you need to make your business successful. Do you need 250 Likes? Do you need 1,000 Likes? If you are only pursing brand recognition, you need to estimate how many ad impressions you need to make to accomplish your goals. You to calculate how many those Likes must translate into a Sale for you to turn a profit? You need to create a marketing plan on how to use your blog to entice engagement among your Facebook Fans. Reach out to your competitors and build upon each other’s audiences. Believe it or not, this is one of the fastest methods for building your Fan Base as quickly as possible with minimal cost. Email marketers still use this tactic to cross-promote with each other’s lists to gain new subscribers and generate more sales. As your content gets better and better, you will find that you will start to get a lot more Facebook Fan. You must be relevant in that Moment with value-added experiences.

“KISS”: “Keep it Simple _________” ( fill-in-the-blank – no pun intended). Maintain a detailed log about the traffic stats you get from your Facebook Fan Page. Stay abreast of the level of engagement of your Fans, the number of new Fans you are adding each week and so forth. You want to build upon your experience and avoid costly marketing mistakes that could easily sink your business.

Ok…you have the Facebook Tactical Blueprint. Invest in yourself and make it happen. Good luck!