More than sure you have read over and over that Pinterest is a major source of traffic for most businesses and bloggers. And indeed Pinterest is a unique combination of search engine and social platform that’s gaining importance each day through gradual market infiltration in valuable demographics. As you have probably found out by now, Pinterest makes constant changes in its algorithm, and consequently, we have to update our Pinterest best practices for business.
If you still doubt take a rough look at some statistics here.
It’s worth noticing that 1 in 2 people decide to make a purchase after viewing a promoted pin, 89% of US users count on Pinterest when looking to make a purchase. Not to mention it’s used mainly by millennials and gen-X.
These changes hurt traffic generation for lots of us and we have to tweak our incorporated Pinterest marketing strategy in order to profit from the opportunity to reach out to our audience till this is still free.
There are many Pinterest marketing strategies out there you can use to gain more visibility from Pinterest, but some bring results some do not, it depends on many details. You just have to try and test and keep what works best for you.
Before starting or digging more in-depth, I think is compulsory to design the large guidelines, and see the whole forest, before approaching the trees. Here are the strategic tactics that you need to implement if you want to take profit from the goldmine phenomenon that is nowadays Pinterest for businesses.
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1. Start with the Right Base: Your Pinterest Profile and Account
Create the right profile targeting your buyer persona
Your profile should be conceived and tailored to your buyer persona, comprising your biography that informs about who is your target client, solutions that you offer to solve their problems, and a call to action. A professional photo should be attached and also keywords included in the profile name.
The purpose of having the right profile is to attract and keep the attention of your buyer personas and avoid any type of confusion that might arrive while visualizing your profile.
Create a good-looking profile with the Cover banner. Here you have several displaying options like your latest pins or pins of a certain board. I suggest that you insert here the board that contains just your pins. In my case “MarketingDigiBook” board.
Another tab is the Overview tab which offers a glimpse of the recently saved pins, pins saved from your domain, and the most recent boards that you saved pins to. Supplementary additions are the Follower tab – which shows the number of your followers, the Board tab – which lists your boards in various ways and the Monthly views – which displays the average number of persons that sees your content in a month.
Use a Pinterest for Business Account
A Business Account will give you access to all the current and future features that Pinterest will develop exclusively for businesses. Some of them are local SEO, educational tools, and resources that help you reach a broader audience on Pinterest. The Business Account is a free account.
Some supplementary insights may be depicted by consulting the Business Best Practices section of Pinterest. And check also the general best practices for Pinterest.
Get your website verified with Pinterest
This action should be completed as it provides you with access to Pinterest Analytics, useless to say it is of out-most importance for your strategy. And it also enhances credibility in front of your readers and builds trust, by certifying that you own the content that was pinned from your site.
Install “Pin It” button
To facilitate the pinning activity and help your users share your content more easily, install the Pin It button. It’s a simple way to increase impressions and clicks. Don’t skip it!
Your site should always be the source for your pins
When uploading your Pins make sure to upload them from your site. This is an extremely important detail, as your site will be registered as the source link of your Pin. And each time you send a pin you create a backlink to your site from an authority source, re-pins will keep this source also. Backlinks created this way will reinforce the authority of your own site and strengthen SEO.
2. SEO – Optimize Your Profile, Your Boards, and Your Pin Descriptions
Since Pinterest is more a search engine, a visual one to be precise, then it appears logical that SEO strategy and tactics should be used.
The ultimate aim of Pinterest is to serve its users the exact content they are looking for. Since Pinterest is using a ranking algorithm to rank content, you should strive to rank as high as possible. The higher, the better for your business.
On your Pinterest account, be sure to have just the boards that your buyer persona expects and wants to see and follow. My recommendation is to have a minimum of 20 boards.
Create a panel of boards in one relevant category. Valid for your pins also, use them in the appropriate category.
Tip: Place your most successful boards on top
When constructing your profile, your boards, and your pins, the focal element is the keywords you choose to rank for, and through them, you are found on Pinterest. Your keywords should be the same words that your buyer personas use while searching.
Your board titles and boards description need to include these keywords. The keywords should reflect the right category and inform your users about what they should expect. Also, it’s important to keep the descriptions short and straight to the point.
Pin descriptions are a powerful tool you should use to engage your audience, so, take advantage of them and write targeted descriptions. These descriptions are the trigger for the traffic you generate for your site. It’s compulsory for pins to be optimized based on the long tail keywords that your buyer persona uses to search, as it drastically increases the chances of your pins being found. Some social media studies reveal that 200 characters description for pins receives the most re-pins. So, test this hypothesis on your audience and adjust accordingly.
Tip: Insert ca call-to-pin to skyrocket the engagement of your pins. It seems that on average the presence of a CTP increases engagement by 80%.
3. Post Consistently. Engagement and Pin Shares Build Relationships, Interact with Followers and Influencers
As I am referring to Social Media, it’s obvious that when using it for our business purposes we have to be social and socialize. On Pinterest, while actively generating the content, also make efforts and engage with your audience, by re-pinning, commenting, or liking, it will help you extend your audience.
Tip: Post daily 10-30 pins, spread throughout the day.
Engagement is a two directions ring, you want your followers to comment on your pins, and you should comment on their pins also. Their followers will also notify you. Engage and follow popular boards in your niche, try to “steal” and learn from the “eminences” that act in your domain. Observe their boards, their pins, and their engaging activity, if you want to reach their level.
Tip: Follow and engage influencers in your industry.
Invite your community to get involved and allow others to send pins to your boards. It’s a huge plus if you can attract industry experts to post on your boards.
No doubt, images have a dramatic impact on pins. If you are not a Photoshop pro or a skilled designer, you still can create great visuals by using tools like Canva. Since Pinterest is stressing more and more about original content, using free stock photos is not a reliable option. But you can try affordable-styled stock photos to use for your visuals.
Right from the beginning upload your blog images optimized for Pinterest. Optimized images mean images with descriptions incorporated and keywords that will automatically appear, it will definitely ease your work.
Tip: Pin all images of a post to reach a broader audience
5. Create Exclusive Images and Infographics
Creating images or infographics that are exclusive provides a remarkable edge: the only manner to share them is to re-pin. Since these will be of course linked back to your site as a source, they will be visible on re-pins also.
Use Pinterest templates to ease and fasten your pin creation activity. As Pinterest favors original pins, the more original pins the better. But you have to create them and this takes time, lots of time. A shortcut to this is using Pinterest templates. Also, you can use Pinterest Marketing Planner Templates that include original content, are highly customizable, and are available in various formats to help you attract more readers.
6. Use Rich Pins
Rich Pins were thought to provide supplementary information within the context. The current types of Rich Pins are articles, apps, recipes, and products.
Rich pins have an increased rate of pins/re-pins, which speaks wonders of their power in the Pinterest world. Don’t hesitate to use them to turbocharge your sales.
Even if Rich Pins request more effort, they improve the user experience and are more attractive. Make sure to have meta tags added to your site and Rich Pins enabled.
Not all your content is appropriate to be used as Rich Pin, use them wisely and when appropriate.
Keep them for products, photos, in-depth articles, events, webinars, etc. Thus, there is one feature from Rich Pins that you should extend to all your pins, and that’s the link to your site.
Tip: Insert a link to your website in the description of every pin.
Tip: Conceive a board only for your Rich Pins
7. Schedule Your Pins
When you create a new piece of content for your site, pin it onto Pinterest and then re-pin it on all your boards that are relevant to the topic.
On your Pinterest account, you should hold a board uniquely for your posts, so, your audience could quickly get a general idea of the type of content you publish.
One of the most common causes that impede an increase in your Pinterest traffic is that you don’t pin enough of your content, and you are not consistent. Pin daily, this is the best strategy to expand your exposure, which could finally lead to more followers, more traffic, more subscribers, and more clients!!!
Tip: Pin daily!
But pinning daily is a time-consuming activity. Software applications enter the scene to reduce effort, you can appeal to schedulers such as Tailwind.
Tip: Schedule a mix of content 50% of your own and 50% of others.
9. Connect with Other Social Media Platforms
Interconnect your accounts on different social media networks Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc. In such a way, you can connect followers that you have on one platform with your account on another platform and share quality content across them.
10. Join Group Boards If You Are a Beginner
Expanding your network with niche boards and group boards could provide valuable help to increase your follower number in a short interval. Joining industry group boards is sometimes a shortcut with multiple benefits (increased targeted audience, quality boards for referrals, etc.), but first, you must be invited to that group.
11. Expect Constant Change on Pinterest and Adapt on the Go
Obviously, the algorithms are always on the move and you have to move with them. We have seen Google, Facebook, and now Pinterest updating their algorithms, and this will be a constant in the future. Being ready to learn new ways of doing things is not an exception otherwise you’ll be left out.
Pinterest, like any other social platform, involves numerous changes that happen permanently. The way the platform worked in 2018 will be different from how it will work in 2019. With the development of technology, there are new requirements that come with it for the betterment of the platform at large. When you adapt to the change, you’ll know how to use Pinterest at any time or season. Thus, be flexible and embrace change! This is the true path of evolution.
What we’ll discuss forward is part of the changes that already took place on Pinterest and impacted current Pinterest marketing strategies. Most of them are Pinterest creative best practices that have yielded results for those that have tested them, I and my clients included.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: The only constant changes, get used to it and embrace it.
For all details on Pinterest updates from this summer, check Alisa Meredith’s Tailwind interview with Pinterest’s Product Marketing Manager Sarah Hoople here:
12. Enhance Your Pins’ Breakthrough
This is the recently updated rule on Pinterest creative best practices 2021 and it is a game changer. We all have the possibility to choose between smart feed or following feed.
The following feed lists in chronological order the newest and greatest pins of the persons that you follow. Which translates into increased importance for engagement and fresh content.
The main purpose is to create more pins, based on delivering more content. New pins are favoured by the new Pinterest algorithm. The idea is to focus on producing more pins and expanding their reach to increase blog traffic, not necessarily to increase the number of followers.
In addition, it is advisable that you create multiple pins for the same post. This advice has been added to Pinterest’s best practices page.
Others can opt to create a different pin version which is still good. However, when you do this you should change the pin description. This is important as the platform will read it differently from your other pins. You are also in a better position to reach out to different audiences using the selected keywords.
Even if there is no such thing as an ideal number of pins for a day, you should test to see what works best for you and play with the number of pins. Just be consistent, do not pin in bulk one day and nothing the next few days (use a scheduler to help with this). In the new following feed, your followers will see all the pins that you saved in a row.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Pin consistently and throughout the day.
To come up with the best Pinterest marketing strategy, you have to ensure that you follow the guidelines laid by Pinterest, that’s obvious.
There are many myths flourishing on the web about the new pin ratios and the best images that work.
Here are some common guidelines you can count on:
a) Ideal Images to Choose
Choose high-quality photos and avoid human faces on your pins (or test this – depending on the niche might be different results). Another thing is that these types of images need to have the ability to grasp the attention of the reader. In general lifestyle images are a good choice, persons need to visualize the item in context. Use overlay text to provide more context or a creative description, preferably both.
Making someone stop whatever he/she was doing by an image isn’t a joke. The images should be of high resolution and colorful.Do not forget to test your pins on mobile, as 80% of Pinterest users are on mobile.
This is what has been causing a huge debate on Pinterest. Everyone is coming with his/her size that has worked for them causing confusion to new users.
Actually, the only thing that has changed is the cutoff point but not the pin ratio. It is still the same as it used to be – 2:3. For those that are obsessed with square pins, they are back, and this is one of the recent updates.
Recommended size by Pinterest is 1000 by 1500. Those are the measurements for the width and height respectively. The maximum dimension is 1260 long but as long as you keep the ruling ratio.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: For new pins use the recommended dimensions. For your best-performing pins create new ones with these dimensions.
c) Use Hashtags
Common for Twitter or Instagram fans, however, they are back again on Pinterest. What do they offer? A real-time feed for users. Pinners that want to find out what is trending on Pinterest use hashtags. You should include them in your new pins, it’s not necessary to modify the older pins as this is irrelevant, and place them at the end of the pin description. I use in general 5 hashtags for my pins.
The guidelines of Pinterest state that hashtags should be:
· Relevant for your content.
· Act as a broad search term. This means that it should not be used for any other purposes like humor.
· Add a maximum number of 20 hashtags once you have discovered that they are relevant to the content.
Hashtagged pins get more distribution the day they are saved.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Add hashtags to your pin description, and place them at the end of the description.
14. Add Fresh Content, the More the Better
At some point, we said that Pinterest loves fresh content and will give priority to it. Let us now dig in to get to know what this fresh content means. Fresh content means firstly an article that you just wrote and that you publish for the first time with its associated pin. New pins for articles already published count also. Before we go further, Pinterest loves new content as it is the main concept behind adding hashtags.
The use of Hashtags has two main purposes. The first one as we all know is that it is used to identify a keyword and facilitate the search for it. The second function is that it is used to differentiate fresh content from older one. In short, they act as filters.
According to studies performed on Pinterest metrics, pinners are more interested in new content and that’s why everyone rushes toward it. Your followers on the platform are always searching for content that will satisfy their needs. So, freshly posted pins are more on their radar.
By constantly posting new content, you are able to swiftly draw a large number of readers to your profile.
Also, be aware that a new Pinterest best practice is to save new pins directly from your site instead of repining them. For example, if you have a new article with a new pin and you want to save that pin to seven boards, save the pin directly from your site for each of the seven boards.
Pinterest aims to promote the content creators or first pinners. So, pins created by the owner of the site and pinned from the respective site first will be given distribution priority in the feed.
Another detail to take into consideration is to pin first to the board what is the most relevant to the topic of the article. This article for instance will be first published to my boards in the following order: Pinterest tips and tricks, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Strategies, Digital Marketing, MarketingDigiBook.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: The Pinterest algorithm will give first priority to new pins and newly published content saved from your site.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Pin your new pin first to the most relevant of your boards on its topic.
15. Manual Pinning and Automated Pinning
If you have been keen on Pinterest users’ questions, you know that this is the most frequently asked question. Let’s get this straight. You can use automated pining as long as you use a Pinterest-approved scheduler. It is advisable that you ONLY use schedulers agreed upon and approved by Pinterest. If you consider is best for you to use one, ensure that it is approved.
Now next big question is: do you need to use just manual pinning, just automated pinning, or both?
Each option has its fans. Personally, I use both and I will explain to you why. I tested pinning up to 40 pins a day with Tailwind and some manual pinning, I tested just automated pinning without manual pinning and I used just manual pinning when I started this blog.
Here are the results of my tests:
– You should keep manual pinning, daily if possible, at least 10 manual pins. If you renounce manual pinning you will see your monthly views decrease heavily and also your traffic. Monthly views are not a very important number, but any way to see this number decrease by about 50% (from 370 k to 200 k) in one month it’s not ideal. My traffic from Pinterest was affected less, but it still decreased. I also saw decreases in traffic and monthly views for other blogs that belong to my clients.
Even if Pinterest says “You’re considered active when you’re saving content on the platform.” That is not exactly true, manual pinning counts.
– Decreasing the number of scheduled pins might not affect the traffic that Pinterest delivers to your site. In my case it didn’t, I decreased from 80 pins a day to 50 pins and after that to 30 pins.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: No matter your choice, do not skip manual pinning for too long.
16. Use an Approved Pinterest Scheduler
A Pinterest Scheduler can be a huge time saver. Even if there are bloggers that say they have great results with manual pinning, the truth is manual pinning requires lots of time.
Personally, I use Tailwind to schedule my pins in group boards and Tailwind tribes. I have to confess Tailwind helps me minimize the time I spend on pinning and brings nice results. I use it for this blog and for blogs belonging to my clients.
Besides having a smart schedule that allows me to optimize the best time to schedule pins when my audience is most active, I am very pleased with the looping options that I employ to schedule my evergreen content into my boards. And also, with the analytics tools that I can use to measure the results of my Pinterest strategy. These are the options in the Insights tab: Profile Performance, Board Insights, Pin Inspector, Website Insights, Organic Activity, and Referral Traffic.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Pins scheduled via Tailwind are posted as fresh pins, not as repins.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Tailwind can offer you extra referral traffic via Tailwind tribes. Give them a try.
Another question that pops up frequently is if you as a content creator need to pin content from others. Pinterest sustains that not, as long as you have enough content of your own to promote. To be tested.
17. Do Not Delete Under-Performing Pins
What about them? The first thought that comes to your mind is to delete them as they don’t add any value to your account. Not really. If you get the chance to speak to bloggers that have reaped big chunks of dollars in Pinterest, you’ll know that they are not into the idea of deleting the underperforming pins.
You could think that they are probably hurting your performing pins, but they aren’t. The performance of a pin has no effect on the rest of your pins.
As we all know (probably by now) Pinterest is subject to algorithmic change and new updates. This can turn out to be good in the long run. The underperforming pins may gain traction and become useful due to new changes and turn into a goldmine.
What you have to do is constantly review the Pinterest analytics and find out which pins are performing well and which are not. For the ones that aren’t working well, you can do some revamping or simply create new pins with another description to increase engagement.
From my own point of view, I strictly do not recommend deleting any of your pins regardless of their performance.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Do not delete underperforming pins, you don’t know when you’ll have a nice surprise. Make new pins and improve their description.
18. Ensure to Have Correct Linking to Articles or Landing Pages
Make sure your pin links to the article you intended. What you should keep in mind is that the pin is not about the image but about the content and relevance of the image to that content.
The pin only acts as a short description of its content. To make the pins more effective, ensure that the keywords are matching.
19. Don’t Forget About Pinterest SEO and Keywords
Keywords are the primary vector that drives eyeballs to your profile, boards, content, and finally to your site. Hence use them properly. The huge majority of the reach will happen far beyond followers that’s why SEO counts.
We hear all over “use catchy titles”, some people use puns and clever titles hence cannot be found when you type the keywords you’d like to search for. Remember Pinterest is a search engine.
Board names are not a place to show your prowess in the English language. Pinterest best practices advise that you should ONLY name your boards with keywords. But do not exaggerate, do not stuff the board name or the description only with keywords. Make all your descriptions conversational.
The keywords should just be enough to help the algorithm understand what it’s the pin or the board about. To make the keywords more effective, they should be written in a user-friendly way.
NB: The Pinterest SEO keywords should be relevant to the boards. The relevance of the keyword helps in spreading the content which will, in turn, reach a larger target audience.
Pinterest Marketing tip: Use keywords relevant to Pinterest, not keywords that are relevant to Google.
20. Take Care of Your Followers
If you are a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram fanatic, you understand pretty well that followers are the drivers of your account. The more you have, the faster and wider your message will spread. The same case applies from now on to Pinterest. The way to get your content shown up in the Smartfeed pass first through your followers.
Even if it’s still possible to generate high traffic for your blog without having a large number of followers, they have a heavy word for spreading your new pins. With the recent updates, the followers are the first to have a glimpse and interact with your new pins in their feeds.
The best thing for a business is that Pinterest has a high affinity for new content.Pinterest will, therefore, ensure that the content reaches your followers as fast as possible.
If your followers are relevant and show interest in your content, they will quickly engage with it and roll it over to non-followers and Pinterest will push it further into the topics and feeds. And this is how pins become viral. However, to make this happen, the ball still rolls on your side. Any content you post on the platform must be relevant to your brand. Nobody likes irrelevant and random boards that make no sense.
For example, picture this. If you are a home décor entrepreneur, everyone expects your posts to be full of the best home upholsteries, décor boards, and decorative brands. You don’t need to post irrelevant posts like food recipes or fashion-related boards.
A final tip: unengaged followers are not of much use. If most of the many followers are not active, they will not spread your content. It is better that you only have a handful of followers that engage with your content rather than a million of them that will not even take a look at what you’ve posted.
Pinterest Marketing Tip: Aim for engaged followers that are interested in what you have to say, not just followers.
21. The Implementation Strategy
With all said and done, it’s now the time to put all that you’ve read into practice. The implementation stage is more important than any other step and this is where many bloggers fail. It is of no use that you get all the available helpful information and throw it away.
There is a lot going on with the Pinterest algorithm and probably even lots to come. And consequently, lots of changes to implement and the above-mentioned Pinterest best practices for business should be of help in 2023 to keep attracting quality traffic for your blog.
You might find it hard to apply them all. Take them one at a time and see what you can incorporate successfully into your Pinterest marketing strategy and what brings you results.
Which are the elements of the best infographic and how to create infographics? I have been fascinated by infographics for a while, then I thought I would like to try my hand and create one myself. Even if I am not exactly a visual person, I am a great fan of the written word primarily, infographics are the exception to the rule in my case. I am not a professional designer, I am just a person with a sharp aesthetic sense. Back to the initial question, let’s explore a bit.
Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase using one of these links, I’ll make a small commission without impacting the price that you will pay. I recommend just services or products I find useful and that I have tested or currently use.
All infographic makers preach that their tool helps you build an infographic in 15-30 min, well, this is an exaggeration, only if you want to gather some elements or you are just referring to the final stage of putting together the design for the infographic, otherwise is far from being that simple.
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In my adventure of finding a good infographic tool I tested several free infographic makers and here is what I discovered:
Visme is a reliable tool to create the infographic you desire, the best infographic. There is a decent collection of free infographic templates from which you can pick up one that fits your taste, or you can create your own from scratch. You have the option to download for free the infographic created at a decent resolution.
Their distinctive advantage is the possibility to insert animations and make interactive infographics. If you share your infographic as a URL your visitors will be able to see these animations.
Canva is among the most popular tools for design and free infographic makers, if you are not a professional designer. Among its capabilities counts infographic designing. They put at your disposal a large collection of free infographic templates, the largest among the applications I tested, infographic examples, a plethora of fonts, and more than one million images. It has a well-organized and intuitive interface. You have the possibility to download your work in several formats or share it.
If you want to create your own infographic as a beginner, this is the best infographics maker to start with and you have a pretty good chance to create an appealing design.
Piktochart is also a good infographic tool, it has a rich collection of free infographic templates to choose from, updated weekly. You can make your own infographic from scratch or use built-in blocks, icons, charts, maps, and an extended selection of photos. You can download your creation as PDF or embed it into your site or as slide show.
And beside some good infographic tools, I also came up with one that succeeded the exploit of offering me one of the most unimpressive user experiences I had in years. I refer to Venngage, despite having a decent template collection and infographic examples, they provide some poor client service and use some misleading advertising.
They claim it’s free to test their services, when in fact it’s not, it’s impossible to export or share an infographic if you don’t have a paid subscription. And they also have various limitations, like the number of items you can upload. All in one, an infographic maker app I will not try again any time soon.
That our brains process better images, it’s not a secret anymore. And this is one of the reasons that explain the success of infographics, as they are visually interesting content marketing pieces that interpret in a simple and digestible manner, complex concepts or data sustained facts. “Publishers who use infographics grow in traffic an average of 12% more than those who don’t,” says HubSpot. It’s a differentiation element that most often stands out.
And in many cases, infographics generate lots of buzz, like these study cases about infographic ROI from Vertical Measures. Or this one from MobileCause which generated over 700 leads.
Anyway, simply gathering together some data and some images will not guarantee the success of your infographic. You want the best infographic you can create to appeal to your audience. There are some tips on how to create infographics online, and some steps to create the best infographic that you should carefully follow, to see valuable results and return on investment.
Keep reading:
Define the Target Audience for Your Infographic
To obtain the best possible results from your infographic, make it specific, tailored, and personalized to your buyer persona’s interests and needs. Your infographic should be relevant to your target segment, not to the whole world.
The highest value leads, the highest traction, attention, and even virality, will be generated by your target audience. Conceive a creative format that will resonate with your audience.
Relevant tip to make your own infographic:
Target your audience
Define the Topic, the Subject of Your Infographic
Choose a topic that resonates with your audience, and that raises her interest. If it’s possible to be a trending story even better.
Your infographic should have a compelling central idea, and be coherent and attention-grabbing from the very beginning. Its primary purpose is to educate and inspire.
Relevant tips:
Define the story style of your infographic – serious, surprising, funny, exploratory
Insert storytelling that evokes emotions, not just numbers and data
Keep just the relevant data and information
The Power is Hidden in the Headline
The headline makes and breaks. If your headline is not powerful enough, your infographic won’t be viewed. As simple as that. In fact, your title should be brilliant, or close to it.
Relevant tips to create your own infographic:
Clearly describes the topic of the infographic
Is eye catching and interesting.
Easy to understand and under 70 characters length.
The template and the format you choose for your infographic need to be fit for its idea and story. And should help you adequately convey the main idea to your audience. Infographic makers offer a variety of customizable templates, take your time and choose one that best matches your infographic story. If you want to help your readers answer a certain question by offering various options, you will choose a flowchart, not a “how to” template.
Relevant tips:
Do your homework and check the theory if you are a beginner. Take a look at a types of infographics presentation.
The template picked, its design, has to match the story you want to tell. If your infographic speaks about great achievements, having a dark crusty background is not exactly the best option.
Personalize the template you choose according to the purpose of your infographic
Gather and Verify the Accuracy of Your Data
The major advantage of infographics is that they present data and numbers in an attractive and interesting way. If your infographic presents many numbers and figures, it is worth to double check them.
Relevant tips for best infographics:
Use reliable, authoritative and up to date sources for your data
Check statistics on several sources
Present the numbers and data in an organized manner
Aim for Simplicity
As always less is more. A minimalist approach is most often the best way to create your infographic. The scope of infographics is to stylize complex ideas into simple visuals. So, just keep it succinct if you want to impress, and focus on just one point without confusing concepts, jargon, long text, or loads of data.
Relevant tips for best infographics:
Use short, straightforward sentences or bullet points
Use just the most relevant data
Highlight the most important points, make it skimmable
Infographic means an emphasis on visual pizazz. Don’t clutter it with too much text. Find the right balance between the two, but keep the written info to the minimum. Embed your infographic with attention-grabbing images to make your data more interesting and engaging.
Relevant tip for best infographics:
Infographic means primarily visual, keep it like that
An infographic is a sublimation of best practices in design. Negative space is important for the balance of your infographic layout. Effective infographic design is fluent and pleasant for the eye, not a noisy conglomerate of visuals.
Relevant tips for best infographics:
Balance the visuals with the negative space to efficiently highlight your message
Choose one color scheme with a few colors and keep it that way
Consider minimizing the number of fonts used, one maximum two should be enough
Aim for Fluency
An effective infographic matches perfectly the design and the cognitive information. They must flow and combine harmoniously to convey the fluence of the infographic and smoothly drive the viewer through the thought process. The best infographics tell a good story, completed by a great graphic design.
Relevant tip for best infographics:
Watch out the congruency of the information and design, their fluency
Consider Making Your Infographics Interactive
Visuals are an essential learning tool, no doubt about that. But it’s also true that kinetic learning is more powerful, humans retain better while executing an activity. Thus, adding interactivity to your infographic should increase its effectiveness. It may offer control to the user and provoke imagination in ways that a static infographic is just not capable of.
Add scrolling effects to spice up the users’ experience and together with animations to engage them further. This interactive infographic is a great example. Other options to make users involve and participate are to insert roll-overs or clicks to discover supplementary information. Or to insert their own data, like in this already famous infographic comparing your revenues to those of John Paulson. It’s a great infographic idea, and also great to destroy your day, duh! (Do yourself a favor and don’t try it when you have a bad day.)
Relevant tips for best infographics:
Insert scrolling effects
Insert animations
Insert roll-overs
Size and Length Matter, So, Keep an Eye On
Infographics during the publishing process might suffer resizing, verify that the readability is not damaged. The smallest fonts need to be visible without effort.
Infographics are meant to be long, but too long means losing your audience on the way. Users might have a slow connection, and a heavy file translates into a poor user experience.
Relevant tips for best infographics:
Limit the length to maximum 8000 pixels
Limit total size to 1,5 MB
Limit the width to 600 pixels
Insert Sources
If you are relying heavily on data in your infographic, citing sources is a must. It will generate trust and authority for your infographic. You can cite the sources at the end of the infographic or even within its body if that doesn’t disturb the general flow.
Promote and Share Your Infographic
Infographics don’t become viral and popular by default, they need promotion. You know the dictum “a piece of content marketing means 20% creation and 80 % promotion”, infographics are no exception. As a consequence you need to share your infographic on social media, data say infographics are three times more shared on social media platforms than other content marketing types. Publish it on your site, insert social sharing buttons, reach influencers in your niche and ask them to spread the word, and ask your audience to share it.
Include parts of your infographics in other social media posts
Publish it on specialized platforms for infographics: Visual.ly, Canva Social Stream
Since visual content marketing is gaining momentum, infographics are still raising interest and bringing results. Not to mention they are a great way to stand out and engage your audience.
And these days is really possible to create outstanding infographics without being a designer, just by using a reliable infographic maker tool and respecting the tips for the best infographics listed above. Have you discovered any other tips or tools that you would like to share?
If you’re wondering how to make money from YouTube then you probably have a YouTube channel or are considering creating one. And it’s for a good reason. More than 80% of YouTube viewers visit the site to either get help in solving a certain problem, learn something new or simply for entertainment.
This means there’s a great opportunity for you to create content that’s going to be of help to someone else. And some early birds realized this and flew with it and are now minting millions, and it’s not too late.
Statistics show that YouTubers are greatly influencing generation Z’s (the generation that follows millennials) buying habits as well as their career paths. Millennials on the other hand check YouTube at least once a day on average. Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has evolved to become the second most visited site on the web just behind Google with over 1.68 billion users uploading around 300 hours of video every single minute. It has also grown beyond just a video sharing platform to a complete search engine.
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And the main reason why it keeps growing each day is because it’s very beneficial in terms of problem-solving as well as entertainment.
So, before jumping into the nitty-gritty of how to get money from YouTube, it’s important to understand a few tips and strategies that you should first consider.
As with every project that you may intend to undertake, you must have primarily a strategy.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
A strategy is your most important step before going any further. Here are a few strategies you should consider.
Tactics Before Creating or Monetizing Your YouTube Channel
i. Determine your objective
Decide how you want to benefit from YouTube. It could be that you want it as a promotional outlet for your brand (whether goods or services) or you might be trying it to evaluate how to make a living from YouTube direct through revenue generating content. This will determine the kind of videos you create. You can monetize YouTube videos based on views and subscribers. The more engagement and following, the more effective it will be in terms of ad space.
ii. Understand your audience demographics – pick your niche
One sure way of creating a connection with your viewers is by having a specific theme. This means by the time they come to you, they already know what to expect. Consider your channel as a story and your videos the flow. When trying to pick your niche it’s best to first consider things that you’re passionate about, gifted at or popular for, as well as who your ideal target audience will be in terms of gender, age, location and such details.
This way you’ll have an easier time focusing, curating and having consistency. You can consider looking at related channels to see how they’re doing it.
iii. Decide on your frequency
Create a schedule that will be achievable depending on how long it may take you to create the videos and how long it may take you to edit. Consistency in your frequency will provide your audience with a clear understanding of when they can expect content from you, and this is how you’re taken seriously. Pick a day and a consistent time and stick to it.
iv. Promote your videos on your other platforms
You most likely have one or more social media profiles that have some (or lots of) following. Start there by letting them know you have something good going on. You can also include your YouTube channel link on the bios of your profiles. Another good place would be your email list, send them an email letting them know about your content with a link through which they can follow your channel.
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v. Cross-promote the YouTube channel
Identify creators within your niche with whom you can co-create some content, or with whom you can both compare or refer to each other’s highlights. This will grow your fan base and engagement level and eventually have an impact on your conversion rates, quite an easy way to make money on YouTube.
vi. Like and subscribe
A call to action here is very important, so ask your audience to share, like and subscribe to your channel because what you need is high engagement and viewership. The more activity there is around your channel, the more it will show up in searches. So, at the end of your video, remember to request your viewers to share, like and subscribe.
vii. Identify keywords
You may assume that because this is a video you don’t need to go the whole nine yards as far as keywords are concerned. But just like blog posts, you need to identify the keywords that will be relevant to you and stand out. Why you need to have these keywords before creating your video, is so that you can incorporate them in your script. Having a keyword repeated several times in your video will help in YouTube search ranking.
viii. Optimize the title and description
You don’t want to go out of your way to create great content for no one to see. Again, this is about YouTube ranking. Remember as said above, YouTube is the second largest search engine, so you will have to optimize your video titles and descriptions by including the keywords at the beginning of the video. The descriptions have to be catchy but with just enough keywords. Do not over stuff or you will get penalized.
ix. Encourage engagement and reduce abandonment
YouTube likes it when an audience stays longer on your channel because this means more ads and thus more revenue for them. It’s for this reason that YouTube video analytics can show you at what point your users abandon your videos on average. So, the use of YouTube cards to recommend your related videos at the abandonment stage may ensure that the audience stays on your channel longer (and of course on YouTube).
It’s beneficial to also encourage engagement by responding to your audience, this way you’ll learn more about what they want and use this to improve your content. Again this plays a huge role in your domain authority and ranking.
x. Upgrade your equipment
Initially, it’s pretty ok to shoot your videos using your smart phone. Just avoid shaking too much and creating blurred images. But as you progress, invest in better equipment (doesn’t have to be expensive). You could also include a stand to stabilize your camera. At the end of the day, no one wants to watch shaky blurry videos; they will just click to a related channel irrespective of how great your content is.
With all these tactics and tips in hand, you’re now ready to get into the real business of making money from YouTube. So, here are the main steps you can take to achieve this.
How to Make Money from YouTube
There are a couple of ways you can use to earn money on YouTube.
a. As an advertiser
b. As an ad platform
As an advertiser, you will pay YouTube for TrueView ads, Pre-roll or Bumpers to get your content to potential buyers. While as an ad platform, you will create content that will be good enough to eventually host others’ content as a paid affiliate or YouTube partner as well.
For good measure
TrueView is an ad format where the viewer is given options e.g. to skip the ad after 5 seconds etc. sponsors only pay for ads viewed in full or up to 30 seconds.
Pre-roll is a non-skippable promotional video message that plays just before the content the user has selected to view.
Bumpers are six-second non-skippable ads that pay per view like TrueView.
So, the above two are umbrella methods under which several other distinct approaches can be used in monetizing YouTube.
Here they are:
a. Sell Products or Merchandise
If you’ve made a name for yourself and have gained an active audience, you will have followers that will be happy to spend their money on your merchandise.
If you have your own products such as apps, eBooks, music or even art, you can promote them on YouTube in countless ways. All you need to do is create a video of the products or services and then add the URL to your website or the site where the viewers can make the purchase of the products.
Such merchandise could include t-shirts, backpacks, diaries and much more. When you creatively brand your merchandise and give it a unique personality, you’re able to capture your audience’s attention and you gain exposure and eventually a huge fan base that will be more than happy to be associated with your products, therefore they will buy.
Here is an example, Stefan James from Project Life Mastery, promoting marketing courses that he loves and his own products in the video description:
B. Gain More Traffic to Your Site Using YouTube
Traffic is a big deal if you have a blog or site. The number of visitors on your site determines the number of opportunities your brand has. The more traffic, the more opportunities to spread your idea/ product, generate qualified leads and more conversion opportunities.
By having a URL in your YouTube, you’re able to funnel your YouTube traffic to your site or blog.
This means earning a commission by selling other people’s products on YouTube. So how to earn money from YouTube as an affiliate marketer or influencer? Well, statistics show that 94% of marketers using influencer marketing are finding it most effective because they generate up to eleven times higher ROI compared to traditional advertising methods. For this reason, brands are investing more in these kinds of marketing because an influencer or an affiliate marketer already has a reasonable and loyal following which depending on the product is often already defined demographically, and this is what they take advantage of.
Your work includes reviewing your affiliate’s products on videos, creating tutorials and also engaging your viewers to get feedback from them. So, when you do a superb job in promoting these products, you end up getting great deals from these companies.
The key thing to remember is to include your affiliate’s links to earn your credit for the sales done.
D. Crowd-fund Your Creative Projects
Crowd-funding on YouTube is quickly gaining popularity as a model for funding projects for creatives and artists. Here people go to a specific page on a website e.g. Patreon and donate money. For this to work, you, of course, must have built a loyal following with regular and consistent quality content production. Your work is supposed to inspire your fans enough for them to be willing to pay cash to help you produce more.
This is a new way of capitalizing on your fans’ database, you invite them to fund and support your activity and your content creation process via a small monthly subscription fee of their choice. And one of the few ways on how to make money from YouTube without AdSense concerns.
E. License Your Content to the Media
In a world with endless possibilities, you could have some very unique video clips that can stir the internet and go viral instantly. This could be a short film, a continuing story or insights. You can offer the media the license to such content in exchange for money. Besides the media, you could list your videos in a marketplace for example Juken Media where your videos will easily find the right people to purchase.
F. Endorsements, Product Placements and Sponsorships
The moment you create a name for yourself and gain a substantial audience, sponsorship deals will come knocking on your door. Corporates will come to you if they are aware, they can benefit from linking to your channel. This means the larger your audience size is, the bigger the sponsorship you’ll be able to negotiate.
Other brands may just require you to use their product in your videos, e.g. wearing their branded watch, riding in their branded car or using their branded gadgets, whatever it could be (even sipping a cup of branded coffee). This is product placement and when you take this a notch higher and recommend these products in your video, you get paid for endorsing them.
This is one way on how to make money from YouTube views. A large audience that draws inspiration from you is as good as mainstream media.
Can you make money on YouTube by becoming a partner? Not directly, but it presents you with a great platform to monetize your content and begin to share in the advertising revenue. Being a partner gains you access to your viewers’ in-depth analytics and ad-clicking.
Some of the benefits of being a partner include:
Getting custom thumbnails
Owning a copyright of your uploaded content
Getting extra promotion of your channel in various advertising programs both online and offline
You get special framed Play Buttons once you reach a certain level of subscribers e.g. a silver Play Button for 100,000 subscribers etc.
If you wish to become a YouTube partner, you will go to the channel menu and pick Creator Studio. Here your account is verified and monetization enabled. Thereafter you’ll be required to have an AdSense account to get into Google’s advertising network to be able to get paid and view your revenue reports.
Final Tips
According to YouTube, the following kind of content could have your ads excluded:
Controversial issues and sensitive events such as graphic imagery, death and tragedies, terrorism or extremism, war or political conflict material are not suitable for ads.
Videos ads containing harmful or dangerous acts that can result in physical, psychological or emotional injury is not suitable for advertising.
Drugs and dangerous products or substances cannot be promoted as ads on YouTube; however educational, documentary or artistic purposes are generally suitable for advertising as long as drug or substance abuse is not glorified.
Inappropriate language or hateful content that promotes any kind of discrimination such as ethnic orientation, nationality, gender etc. are not suitable for advertising.
Sexually suggestive content is not suitable.
There are many ways on how to make money from YouTube, whether as an advertiser or as a partner. The important thing is to have an objective that will be backed by strategy and tactics. Consistency in high quality and relevant content will ease your efforts in building a large fan base, and that is one of the pre-requisites of monetizing YouTube.
It is said that video is king, but YouTube wears the crown, but the truth is without you and the next content creator, YouTube wouldn’t have any crown.
Are you new to Facebook advertising and searching for simple Facebook ads for the dummies guide? Then this article will give you all the important expert advice that you need.
There is literally a myriad of ad choices today, both free and paid and according to Adweek, tables turned in 2017 when digital advertising exceeded TV advertising. With the huge amount of content being thrown around each minute, consumers have become fatigued and their attention span has become shorter than ever, just about 8 seconds.
But this can change if you can better understand your consumer’s purchase behavior and motivation by leveraging the data shared by tech research and insights discovered lately and using this to give your consumers exactly what they need when they need it and where they need it.
Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate or sponsored links. If you decide to make a purchase using one of these links, I’ll make a small commission without impacting the price that you will pay. I recommend just services or products I find useful and that I have tested or currently use
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Advertising is all about giving your consumers an enjoyable experience that will convert into a purchase. And this is why Facebook ads remain the best overall ad channel for you to use.
Which would be a simple definition of Facebook advertising: the action of paying to place advertising/ promotions in Facebook feeds targeting a specific audience.
Here are a few reasons why Facebook ads for dummies is your best choice for the moment and in the near future:
Why You Should Use Facebook Advertising
World Wide Customer Reach
With over 2 billion active monthly users, Facebook remains the juggernaut in digital marketing today and possibly in the years to come. This is a huge audience with great diversity.
Taking into consideration that the ever-changing algorithm that Facebook uses transforms the organic connection with fans into a struggle, Facebook ads are the remaining substitute.
2. Simple to use
You can create ads fast and easily from your Facebook page. You can use either the “Boost Post” or “Promote” button with a few clicks. But everything highly depends on your objectives.
3. Split testing
Facebook allows you to test your ads on various bespoke audiences and core elements of an ad included in one campaign. What this means is that you get valuable data on your target demographic and this way you create content that’s relevant to them and the efficiency of your ads improves.
4. Lead generation
Facebook lead ads make it simple for your potential customer to give you information through the lead ad form that appears on their screen irrespective of the gadget they’re using. Here customers can request more information on your products or services directly. This engagement with the customer is something that you’re going to need.
5. Conversion measurement
Facebook provides metrics, insights, and other tools that you can use to measure your success and the return on ad investment for your campaigns. This way you can understand the effectiveness of your ads and the actions that drive success.
6. Your ads are tailored to your specific goal
Facebook provides an array of advertising objectives; this means that you’re able to choose the options that best suit your brand’s goal.
7. Cost effective
You can spend up to a minimum thread placed between $1 to $5 a day based on your budget and ads campaign, in order to manage your Facebook advertising costs. And as you proceed you can adjust, pause or stop ads as finances change in your business. These features make Facebook ad pricing adjustable and cost-effective.
Facebook ads can be very cost-effective if you approach them the right way and you know what you are doing. And the reverse of the medal is also true, you can lose lots of money if you approach them in an amateurish way or treat ads superficially.
8. Targeting capabilities
You can target your audience by location, gender, interests, age, demographics, or even purchase history. This means you can engage your target audience with a campaign that’s tailored just for them.
This list is not exhaustive, Facebook’s ads advantages are so much more and keep getting better day passing.
Here are some examples of Facebook ads and Facebook video ads:
Taking into consideration that advertising budgets are continuously increasing, there should be a solid reason behind this.
If properly managed Facebook ads offer small businesses a relevant competitive edge. Here is an impressive Facebook ads example that illustrates the success you may reach: an eCommerce company Barbell Apparel betted on Facebook ads to surpass their product lunch goal 49 times.
So, with this knowledge in mind, how then do you create a winning Facebook ads campaign?
Ouch, tough question!
How to Create Facebook Ads Step-by-Step and Ads That Convert
Facebook advertising comes in two categories. There is paid advertising and organic advertising. They’re both very effective if done well, except that with the free advertising method, it will be required much more time to deliver consistent results. The paid method on the other hand means you get a swift and easier start but at a cost.
Some of the options offered by Facebook on the paid ad method include:
Boosting brand awareness
Boosting videos
Boosting app installs
Boosting page likes
Boosting page visibility
Boosting engagement
Free Facebook ads give you these options to promote your ad:
Sharing content
Joining groups to market your brand
Manually inviting people to your page
Engaging people in discussions
As you can see, free means more work. Notwithstanding all these, here are the steps to follow for either method you pick, to help you meet those targets:
Facebook ads for dummies: Identify your objective
Before starting your ads campaign, you must have an objective that will help you become visible to your prospects and that will make them think about your product. This objective must be backed up by a strategy. Ask yourself the following questions:
What’s your specific product?
Who are you targeting?
How is the product used?
What is the goal of the campaign?
Which are the pain points and objectives that your product solves?
What’s your budget?
The bottom line here is that your ads should generate meaning and purpose to your target audience; they should add value and at the same time nurture your credibility as it opens your relationship with the future consumer.
Your ad objective could be:
Store visits
Conversions
Traffic
Brand awareness
Engagement
Lead generation
Facebook ads for dummies: Develop your strategy
If this is your first attempt at this, you may feel a little overwhelmed on how to balance the Facebook posts, videos, infographics, and even how to keep creating new relevant content. But here are a few things to help you through:
Understand the customer journey by knowing the best way to reach them, and then include emotion and expectation to make your content relevant.
Know your placement, will it be a Facebook page? Instagram? Audience network? (as explained below)
Make sure your ad communicates your brand’s core values.
Be ready to adapt to the ever-changing data, you’ll be more effective with time.
Focus on your ideal client and let that ad speak to their goals, challenges, and opportunities. b. Choose the placement of your ads
Placements are simply where you want your ad shown. It is the place where your target audience spends their time the most. You can allow Facebook to show your ads where they‘re likely to perform best.
Depending on your goals, your ads can appear on:
Facebook – Feeds, Instant articles, In-stream Video, or Marketplace.
The good news here is that your ad can run in all the above options.
Facebook ads for Dummies: Have a budget
Are you wondering how to allocate a budget, how much to what? Or how to choose your budget scheduling in your Facebook ads manager?
Conversion is always going to differ, so testing work is absolutely necessary. Here are experts’ recommendations during the test period:
Let the ad run for 4-7 days to give Facebook the optimum time to optimize.
It’s ok to spend $5 to $10 per ad but if your budget can allow for more, the better and quicker the results.
Once you get into the budget and schedule part of the Ad Set, you have the daily option and the lifetime option. The daily budget focuses on spending a bit each day while the lifetime budget is for the entire campaign period and can end up using more money. For you as a Facebook ads beginner, the daily budget is advisable.
The benefit of testing your ads will help you with the Facebook ads budgeting phase, as you’ll find out which ad performed the best, and then you can scale it up and pivot on it.
v. Carousel (lets you show several pictures or videos)
vi. Slideshow
vii. Lead generation ads
viii. Offers
ix. Post engagement
x. Event responses
xi. Page likes
Each ad type offers unique advantages and depends on your ad’s goal or objective. That said, Video ads and Carousel are known to have the highest engagement.
Evolution of the types of Facebook ads used by companies. Source: Adespresso
The next stage of this Facebook ads for dummies tutorial is to create the ad itself.
Now, let’s create that first winning Facebook ad.
Consider these key strategic steps:
a. Define Your Sales Funnel
The funnel is a set of steps a user is guided through before they reach the conversion level. So, then it’s obvious that your Facebook ads success narrows down to having a high-converting funnel. But how do you build a high-converting funnel?
First, you attract customers with valuable content that solves their problems.
Then encourage action by building a simple emotional and compelling landing page that will quickly create a connection.
After that create a content plan that will resonate with your audience by knowing precisely what they will need or want at each conversion stage.
b. Proof of concept
This simply means that by the time you’re creating this Facebook ad, you’re positive that people actually need or want what you’re selling.
c. Install the Facebook Pixel
This is a small piece of code that acts as an analytical tool, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your ad by understanding the actions people take on your website. Facebook pixel is vital for creating lookalike audiences. You should therefore set it up first to be able to optimize your ads to the right people.
d. Write a killer ad
The best approach here is to write your ad from up to 5 different angles that will resonate with your target audience.
e. Lookalike audience
The minute you get a good amount of conversions, then it’s time to start building lookalike audiences. Targeting people who are similar to your current customers always works.
Having worked on the above key points before creating your ad, has proven to propel Facebook ads upward leading to faster success.
Now that you have all the basic winning tips for creating a great Facebook ad, the next thing you need to know is how to manage them.
Facebook Ads for Dummies: How to Manage Your Ads
You have created a brilliant ads campaign, and it’s up and running; now you need to measure its effectiveness, influence, and overall quality.
Facebook has made this easier by incorporating management tools that will help you see what’s working and what’s not. These tools also help you experiment with various images, titles, and texts to see which gets the best response.
Customize your graphs and tables to see the metrics that present valuable information for you.
Duplicate your ads, ads set, or ads campaign.
Edit your ads setting e.g. targeting and budget all from one place
Follow up on your metrics in one shot.
Business Manager
This one enables you to manage all your advertising accounts, pages, apps, and permissions in one place. Through this tool, you can:
Create and manage separate ads accounts
Get an overview of your ads impressions
Here is a simple guide on how to set up your Facebook business manager.
So, to recap the benefits of Facebook ads management tools here is a tutorial with a few tips that will come in handy and give you an added advantage for your ads:
a. Learn to keep your audience interested in your content by keeping the frequency of your post relevant. Work with seasonality, high demand, or days such as Black Friday. Along the way, you’ll learn the times that get the most response and stick to them.
b. Create an actual Facebook business page for your brand; do not use a personal account. Why? Because you will miss out on all content creation tools, promotional opportunities, and insights that come with the business page.
c. Make the most of Facebook’s targeting tools such as the bull’s eye button that you can use to set metrics for your preferred audience.
d. Make use of the call to action buttons such as the “watch video”, “sign up” etc. These buttons help you improve traffic to your page, or website or just get a good serving of eyeballs on your Facebook page.
e. Use a recognizable profile picture so that your consumers will easily remember your brand. Be it a company logo or your personal headshot of you personally as a brand, let the image you use be your very first voice.
f. Still on images, let your cover photo also be captivating in a way that catches your audience’s attention. Quality is everything.
g. Use videos. The most shared content on social media today is visual content. This could be, at least partly the reason why Facebook added the “watch now” button. So, make it fun, and informative and allow your audience to get a great experience.
h. Keep an eye on the response on your page and interact with your audience.
i. Promote your page to build your follower base and improve traffic.
When this is all done, now you enter the next phase of finding out whether all the work you put down will bear any fruit.
Facebook Ads for Dummies: How to Measure the Success of Your Facebook Ads Campaign?
Even the best strategy can be a waste of time unless you can prove that it achieved its goal. It is important to know what worked for your brand so that you can improve on it and gain even more. Measuring the effectiveness of your Facebook ads means going a little deeper than the metrics into intangible data, like branding awareness and popularity.
Important factors you may want to consider before digging deeper are:
i. Remind yourself of your goal
The only way to determine the success or effectiveness of your Facebook ads is if you compare your initial goal, with what you were trying to achieve in the first place. A goal helps you create a unique formula to measure your success.
ii. No formula fits all
Your formula as indicated above is determined by your goal therefore needs to be unique. Using the Facebook ads report, you have 45 metrics to track. These variables are numerous, so you need to evaluate the ones that make your ads successful and the ones that are relevant to your goal.
Now, with these two key points in mind, let’s look at some of the most effective metrics you can use.
Conversions
This means different things for different business folks but generally, it refers to whether the audience took the desired action e.g. product to cart or app downloads.
Reach
This means your brand is viewed and recognized by more people. How many people did your ad reach and what was the percentage of your target?
Frequency
How many times was your ad seen by the same audience?
Return On Investment
Whether your brand is new or not, ROI is an important if not the most important metric. That said, don’t get discouraged if the ROI is low when you’re just starting. At this stage brand awareness that drives engagement is equally important. It may take you a little more time to nurture the users’ interest before they make a purchase.
Impressions
This is the number of times your ad was shown.
Facebook Ads for Dummies: Supplementary Tips to Improve Your Facebook Ads Results
Take into consideration that Facebook ads are to be approached differently than Google ads or YouTube ads for example, as ads on Facebook are integrated naturally into the flows without impacting the user experience. Also, Facebook users are not looking to buy at that very moment, ads need to capture their attention and rise interest.
Most often Facebook ads fail because of this simple reason: if you just throw up some random ad to a “cold” audience, not familiar with your brand and product, you cannot expect relevant results.
Best Facebook ads are visually appealing, relevant for their target audience, and include a value proposition and a clear call to action.
Build different ad campaigns for the different stages of the sales funnel: for awareness, decision, and conversion. And custom audiences play a great role here.
When you are just starting with ads, no matter the channel, start small and expand later in the function of the situation and goals.
Never pay for impressions, you want to pay for clicks and conversions.
The right balance in the ad composition between length, words, and tone are decisive if the viewers decide to move further by clicking on your ad.
The perfect ad is a combination of a clear, relevant, five-word headline matched with a 20 words ad text that is concise and catchy (Adespresso research finding).
Link descriptions were shorter in 2018, 13 words, and the top 5 CTAs were “Learn More”, “None”, “Shop Now”, “Sign Up”, “Book Travel” among the selection of over 30 CTAs that Facebook provides. (Adespresso research findings)
Respect Facebook specs, and use less overlay text to have better results from ads.
Video ads are more and more popular, when creating Facebook video ads consider inserting the most important information in the first 5-10 seconds, using the primary colors (red, yellow, blue), and taking advantage of scrolling text.
First focus on small changes that will bring the largest wins.
Conserve what works for you in terms of ads and continuously test to improve your results. Test small variations and only one at a time.
Ad fatigue will interfere after a certain time, ads performance will decline after a few weeks or sometimes days.
Don’t stop the campaigns too early, before they touch their potential, give them at least a week to evolve.
Run the best-performing ads set until it starts declining, which might be a week, most often around 5 days.
Start to expand on your ads – increasing budgets and reach, only when your ads are generating positive ROI.
Experiment with audience targeting.
Custom audiences are the common elements for high-performing Facebook ad campaigns.
Do your best to increase the Relevance Score, as that translates into higher click-through rates and lower costs.
Facebook ads are not unfortunately rocket science, you have to cater your own way and find out what works for your business. Test everything, track and optimize continuously your ads performance
To improve direct sales via Facebook, target persons that already considered your products and visited your site.
It’s possible with Facebook to track offline conversions too.
Here’s something to note, Facebook marketing can now alert you if your ad fails to deliver and consequentially offer more details on why it failed. The new “ad run status” feature will indicate if something is not right with the ad and will list the error codes that affected its running. This troubleshooting by Facebook allows you stay on top.
Results indeed come first. Determining the proper metrics to evaluate your campaign allows you to optimize your Facebook ads strategy to improve your outcome.
Finally
If your business is new to Facebook advertising, remember that your first goal isn’t to just sell, but to promote your content that’s related to your target audience in entertaining, informative and unique ways. Your primary goal should be to get click-through and traffic to your website. Following your landing page should be properly optimized to avoid your entire effort going down the drain.
But Facebook is a great platform for businesses of all sizes and it’s a rich territory for all your marketing plans that can support your business expansion if properly used, and Facebook ads is particularly such an example.
You are a solopreneur or have a small business and you know marketing is a core pillar for the success of your business. Even if you are not a marketer or you have nothing to do with marketing when having a business you have to deal with marketing, whether you like it or not.
Consequently, you have to know marketing. Check out the following marketing quiz and see how you stand! I hope you will enjoy it. Good luck!
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