Categories
Social Media

The Top 25 Facebook Marketing Blogs That You Must Follow

Facebook is the biggest social media platform on the Internet.
Updated: August, 2021

Facebook(tm) has over 3 billion daily active users globally and its membership is growing at a fast pace around the world. (reference Facebook company info page)

If you are a business or a digital marketer, you cannot – and should not – ignore social media giant Facebook.

And, the incredible reach and capabilities of (Facebook ads) their hyper-targeting is something you hopefully are already taking advantage of…

If not – you must.

Facebook done for you ads

As is the case with giant software platforms, Facebook is constantly changing.

Their growing team of engineers regularly introduce new features and capabilities. It is not easy to keep track of those changes.

For example, here are screen shots from the Ad campaign objectives from 2016 and 2017:

new-facebook-campaign-options
Facebook Ads 2016 campaigns: New options added for last year
facebook-ads-marketing-objective
Facebook Ads 2017: What’s your marketing objective – select from awareness, consideration, conversion

Organic Facebook Traffic

Consider optimizing your Facebook profile and Facebook business pages to get a solid media presence in search engines — from ALL your social platforms. Driving traffic from organic and paid media is critical. It will be even more important in the months and years ahead.

Here is the list of “The top 25 Facebook marketing blogs” and experts that you must follow to keep track of the changes and help you succeed at Facebook (ads) marketing and social media.

Social Media Examiner

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

social-media-examiner-blog

This website is counted among the top blogs on the Internet on using social media (and Facebook) for businesses.

This blog covers a wide variety of topics ranging from “how-to”, increasing customer engagement, Facebook marketing and insights about many other social media platforms and tools. It has a massive amount of readers and on this blog you will find useful facts using social media and Facebook to help grow your business.

Follow founder Michael Stelzner on Twitter.

Jon Loomer

https://www.jonloomer.com/blog/

jon-loomer-facebook-marketing-blog

It is one of the most popular blogs when it comes to Facebook marketing.

Jon (great name!) is an expert on Facebook marketing. Also, his blog is different from the other blogs on social media that are just trying to make a quick buck, or sell you something in the first 10 seconds.

Follow Jon Loomer on Twitter.

All Facebook (Now Adweek)

https://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/ (the old URL was https://allfacebook.com/)

adweek-social-daily-marketing-blog

This blog is part of the Webmediabrands which is a huge publishing company covering a lot of different topics including social media.

This particular blog shares the inside scoop on Facebook and other social media platforms. In simple terms, you need to read this blog to stay on top of all things related to Facebook.

Follow Socialtimes on Twitter.

FREE WEBINAR: Register For Your Free Access so you can get more value from keywords and your content. Includes 2 bonus gifts not found in this article.


John Haydon

https://www.johnhaydon.com/

He covers a lot of different topics on this blog. If you want some honest insights on using Facebook, this is the blog you want to follow. Especially if you want Facebook training courses.

On this blog, his main focus is on advising non-profits on leveraging the reach of Facebook for fundraising and other purposes.

However, his marketing tips on Facebook can be used for all kinds of businesses to succeed on the biggest social media platform on the Internet.

Follow John on Twitter.

Social Media Explorer

https://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/

As the name suggests, this blog is the home of consulting company called Social Media Explorer LLC.

In addition to information on other social media platforms, they share a lot of valuable marketing related insights regarding Facebook.

Follow SME Digital on Twitter.

Amy Porterfield

https://www.amyporterfield.com/

She is the co-author of the book called Facebook Marketing All in One for Dummies. She is also a social media strategist and trainer.

On her blog, she shares a lot of valuable insights on Facebook marketing and other social media websites.

Follow Amy on Twitter.

Razor Social

https://www.razorsocial.com/blog/

In addition to the amazing social media tools and training, this blog is considered as one of the best resources on the Internet for free information on Facebook marketing and various other social media tools.

They also cover a lot of topics on search engine optimization.  Follow RazorSocial on Twitter.

Jeff Bullas

https://www.jeffbullas.com/

He is a social media consultant and has helped a number of businesses as well as personal brands with using social media and online business development in the right manner.

His blog offers free information on using various social media platforms including Facebook. Most of the popular posts on his blog are related to Facebook marketing. He has exclusive training available for a paid fee also.

Follow Jeff Bullas on Twitter.

FREE WEBINAR: Register For Your Free Access so you can get more value from keywords and your content. Includes 2 bonus gifts not found in this article.


Buffer Blog

https://blog.bufferapp.com/

This tool is very well-known in the world of social media marketing. Their blog is counted amongst the top blogs on social media marketing for sharing honest insights on their social media efforts and the results.

Overall, you will find a lot of valuable information on their blog regarding Facebook marketing.

Follow Buffer over at Twitter.

Mari Smith

https://www.marismith.com/

While you won’t find a ton of posts on her blog, but everything she shares on the blog is incredibly detailed.

She’s a down to the earth blogger and Facebook consultant who practices what she preaches on her blog. In fact, she is one of the most sought-after speakers as well as trainers on the subject of Facebook marketing for businesses.

Follow Mari Smith on Twitter.

Rebekah Radice

https://rebekahradice.com/blog/

She is a sought-after speaker and trainer on using social media for businesses.

On her blog, you will not only find information related to Facebook marketing for businesses but also how businesses can take advantage of various other social media platforms to grow their business.

Follow Rebekah Radice on Twitter.

Kim Garst

https://kimgarst.com

This blog from Kim Garst is focused on teaching small businesses on using social media to gain new customers.

In addition to sharing tips on using Facebook the right way, he also shares some extremely valuable insights on marketing on various other established social media platforms and emerging social media apps such as Periscope.

Follow Kim Garst on Twitter.

Nanigans

https://www.nanigans.com/blog/

Naigans is an advertising automation software but their blog is so full of valuable posts on Facebook and overall social media marketing.

You’ll find a lot of valuable information on using various features of Facebook to get new customers and enhance the performance of your existing marketing campaigns.

Follow Nanigans on Twitter.

Agora Pulse

https://www.agorapulse.com/blog

Agora Pulse is known as one of the industry leaders when it comes to Facebook marketing and social media / backend analytics.

They offer a number of free as well as paid tools for helping businesses get the greatest ROI on their Facebook marketing efforts.

Their blog is full of useful information on Facebook marketing as well as overall social media marketing strategy.

Follow Agora Pulse on Twitter.

Ignite Social

https://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/blog/

This agency is known as one of the world’s best when it comes to development of highly effective social media marketing campaigns and overall strategy.

Their blog covers a variety of different platforms. You will find a number of well tested marketing approaches on social media.

Follow IgniteSocialMedia on Twitter.

FREE WEBINAR: Register For Your Free Access so you can get more value from keywords and your content. Includes 2 bonus gifts not found in this article.


Convince & Convert

https://www.convinceandconvert.com/blog/

While this blog is known as one of the best blogs on content marketing, they also post a lot of information related to social media marketing.

Their blog covers a variety of the topics related to Facebook marketing and the information on their blog is useful for beginners as well as advanced marketers in social media. Register for daily and weekly recaps.

Follow Jay Baer and team on Twitter.

HubSpot

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing

It won’t be wrong to say that everyone involved in digital marketing has heard of Hub Spot.

Their blog has a lot of information on digital marketing as well as various other things related to Facebook marketing.

Though this blog is not specifically dedicated to Facebook marketing, they have a lot of interesting insights on how to use Facebook effectively.

Follow Hubspot on Twitter.

Andrea Vahl

https://www.andreavahl.com/blog

Andrea is a well-known speaker and coach on social media. She is also the co-author of the book called, Facebook Marketing All in One for Dummies.

On her blog, she shares a number of highly valuable insights on using social media and especially Facebook.

Follow Andrea Vahl on Twitter.

Social Mouths

https://socialmouths.com/blog/

This blog has won numerous awards when it comes to blogs focused on social media marketing.

In fact, this blog is consistently ranked as one of the top 50 blogs on social media as well as content marketing.

It is the brainchild of Francisco Rosales and the blog offers some of the best advice on social media content, you’ll be able to find on the Internet for free.

This blog offers various helpful strategies as well as how-to’s on using social media for beginners and advanced marketers.

Follow SocialMouths on Twitter.

Gary Vaynerchuck

https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/blog/

Loud marketer (but wise) Gary Vaynerchuck is one of the world’s best-known marketers.

Anyone who has ever read anything on digital marketing is aware of the genius of Gary. He is unpredictable and the content on his blog is absolutely amazing.

His no-nonsense approach to social media marketing has turned him into one of the biggest brands in the world of social media.

On his blog, there is a lot of information on how to succeed on social media.

Follow GaryVee on Twitter.

Social Media Today

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/

They publish a lot of white papers related to social media marketing.

As the name suggests, their blog covers the latest happenings in the world of social media and especially, Facebook marketing.

Follow SocialMediaToday on Twitter.

FREE WEBINAR: Register For Your Free Access so you can get more value from keywords and your content. Includes 2 bonus gifts not found in this article.


Post Planner

https://www.postplanner.com/blog

This marketing app is used by over 200,000 marketers all over the world. Their blog is full of information related to marketing on Facebook and various other platforms.

On the blog, the posts include ways to increase shares and likes on Facebook and various other Facebook marketing tips.

Follow PostPlanner on Twitter.

Sprout Social

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/

They define their platform as powerful software for social business and a better way to manage social message for businesses.

On their blog, you’ll found various useful tips on marketing related to Facebook and other social platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.

Follow SproutSocial on Twitter.

Maximize Social Business

https://maximizesocialbusiness.com/

As the name suggests, this blog is focused on helping businesses realize the importance and reach of social media.

The main focus of this blog is on sharing insights on using Facebook as well as several other social media platforms to maximize business.

Follow MaximizeSocialBusiness on Twitter.

Facebook Newsroom

https://newsroom.fb.com/

Needless to say, this is where you’ll find the latest information on various new features and other tools available to marketers on the Facebook platform.

Follow Facebook on Twitter.

This is a small list of the blogs where you will find useful information related to Facebook marketing.

Facebook has successfully grown its membership as well as revenue by regularly introducing new tools to help the members as well as marketers who want to reach those members.

CONCLUSION:

Follow these blogs on a regular basis to stay ahead of the competition when it comes to Facebook marketing.

Question: Who or what Facebook marketing blog or authority did we miss? Any others you think should be added?

BONUS: Watch the Facebook Ads CASE STUDY for Live Events Marketing

FREE: Download the free Social Media Performance Handbook that will show you how to set up your social media campaigns in 7 simple steps. Includes 2 bonus strategies not found in this post.


Categories
Facebook advertising

Are You Making These Mistakes in Your Facebook Advertising?

Critical mistakes new advertisers make with Facebook Advertising

You’re trying to drive more leads and revenue into your business. You are familiar with the massively popular Facebook ad platform.

But, as you begin setting up campaigns and spending your ad money with Facebook advertising, you realize (after a while) that you’ve spent hundreds or thousands of dollars but with low click through rates and poor conversions. Your cost per lead is more than the average order value of your products or services, and you cannot see how the average lifetime value of the customer will yield proper ROI.classic facebook ads mistakes chaosmap

Like any other advertising method, Facebook comes with its own risks and pitfalls.

If you’ve lost all hope, you might be interested to know that many marketing professionals and business owners experience a great amount of success using the Facebook advertising system.

But, not always at first…

Here are five mistakes many make when advertising on Facebook:

1. Using Incorrect Campaign Goals

What are you trying to accomplish with your Facebook advertising campaign? While the obvious bottom line for every business is to make money, your advertising goals should be directed at smaller, more manageable goals that ultimately lead to an increase in revenue.

Consider the following list of possible goals and how they pertain to your business:

  • Website Clicks – When using this goal, you need to measure the cost per click.
  • Page Likes – If your goal on Facebook is to increase your fan base (not recommended), then you need to measure how much it costs to obtain every like.
  • Page Post Engagement (PPE) – Engagement is crucial on Facebook, especially when trying to spread a message or piece of content. You can measure engagement by dividing the total cost of one advertisement by the amount of shares it received.
  • Conversions – is the CPC (cost per click) investment less than EPC (earnings per click)? (Facebook have many options to track stats, but it gets down to ROI / ROAS and CLTV)

Setting and tracking every goal correctly will help you measure your success, help you manage your ad spend and respond effectively to any campaigns that are ineffective.

WANT AN EXPERT FACEBOOK ADS REVIEW? 

2. Creating Only ONE Ad

Business owners who only create one advertisement will likely fail and lose potentially big dollars over time.

Not every ad you create will work. While there are proven ad formats and direction you can take, ads must be tested, and against each other.

In fact, the majority of your ads will likely generate less than 10 percent of your conversions.

The easiest way to solve this issue is to create between 2-4 different ads and let Facebook perform A/B testing on them. This will allow you to determine the handful of ads that net you the greatest return.

Watching metrics like ad frequency, relevance score, CTR vs CR, number of leads, ad performance by placement, clicks by interest, video views, etc – should be reported on and it’s impact. For example, you may see a low relevance score, but if it’s converting, don’t touch it!

And, don’t forget – using creatives that support the ad copy is ESSENTIAL, and testing different formats, placements (newsfeed, sidebar, instagram, etc) and types is a MUST. (video, photo, stories, messenger, carousel, etc).

This is easy enough to do this in Facebook, but be clear on your outcomes before just modifying another checkbox, creative or type. This year, testing videos will be key to your success! And, Facebook now allows slideshow ads to create animated effects for those who cannot budget professionally produced videos.

3. Poor Landing Page Experience, No Call to Action and Missing / Incorrect Pixel Code

Have you ever dealt with a car salesman that took you on a test drive and then never asked you to buy a car? He did all the hard work but never asked for your business.

The same principle can be used in Facebook advertising. You created so much hype for your product with your awesome advertisements and then led potential customers to a horrible landing page and with no clear call-to-action.

The best solution to this problem is to create a Facebook approved landing page or squeeze page.  IMPORTANT: Make sure that you have implemented the Facebook Pixel on your pages. Your entire website should have this little snippet of code applied, so you can track conversion points and add valuable data points to custom audiences.

Squeeze pages are there simply to provide value, benefits and asking a prospect to perform an action.

Whether it be an email opt in or to enter information to receive a free e-book or special whitepaper – your landing page must directly ask the customer to complete one simple task, or your clicks will be wasted.  Note: a customer journey engagement map should be developed, so that you build multiple landing pages and interaction points based on cold, warm and hot (buyer) traffic.

4. Incorrect / Bad Targeting of an Audience

Facebook geographical targeting tools (Insights) are available for a reason.

If you create an advertising campaign and then simply let Facebook show it to every single person in the United States, or men and women between 18 and 65+ you’re going to waste a lot of money with no real results.

Facebook advertising isn’t the same as broad-based television or radio advertising. That’s “branding” money tax for big budgets. You are smarter than that.

You must perform research on customers who you think (survey your list!) might be interested in your product and use that information to geographically locate your demographics and more.

While your total overall reach is much smaller, your CTR and conversion rates will dramatically increase – and they will/should respond better to your advertising and offers. Building custom audiences from traffic, engagement, video % watched and email lists (segmented by buyers and subscribers) is something not to be missed as you build out your campaign goals and business strategies.

Add to the audience strategies, “exclusions” – that help further narrow down your audience for better ad traction and clarity.

5. Neglecting Your Ad Campaigns

Never set your campaigns up and then forget about them.

As a general rule, you should check your Facebook campaigns at least twice per week to see how they are performing, and more often during the initial setup of any new campaigns. If one ad is failing (no return, high cost, etc), replace it with another set of ads and continue to test the ads and your landing pages (A/B testing).

If you have a larger daily spend, you should check it daily (several times when you are first starting out) to make sure you’re money isn’t being wasted and that your information is truly serving your audience. Tip: What can help you as you start to see it working, is to established RULES (either via Facebook internally) or from tools like Revealbot, that can help automate ads and campaigns.

TIP: A strategy that you can use, is to allocate advertising dollars towards your articles or blog posts. Then, create call-to-action buttons/links on those pages. More trust, good will and engagement will be had, and Facebook and your users will love you for it too! Plus, you’ll be able to retarget them later, and build audiences for up to 180 days.

Want to learn more?

Here’s a great way to learn more about how to avoid these mistakes and to implement a proven process.  (Free registration for our Facebook Done For You Consultation)

Categories
Facebook

Facebook And The New Content Policies: What You Need To Know

Does your Facebook feed seem a little less noisy to you? Sure, you’re still seeing your best friend from elementary school’s engagement announcement and the 16th album of baby photos uploaded by your cousin on the other side of the country, but what about that useful business page you liked a while back?

Who’s Being Affected?

Every business on Facebook large or small is being affected by these sweeping content policies. The organic presence of a company as big as Lifelock on Facebook nor a mom and pop convenience shop on Facebook are safe from these changes. Facebook has overhauled the news feed algorithm to cater to businesses that pay for ads and sponsored posts.

Only 1-2% of their audience will be reached organically now, according to Biz Journals, which could prove to be detrimental for small businesses or startups.

It seems like viral sites are being hit the hardest, with Upworthy declining 51 percent and Distractify down 77 percent in just a few months, as Ad Week highlights. This also heavily affects nonprofits and charity organizations, as many don’t have the budget for a Facebook marketing campaign (among any others they may have at the moment).

Are There Any Workarounds?

That’s the question of the week. The only known workaround at the moment is to tag another business in your post. That method only makes sense if you’ve built rapport with another brand and you can both profit off of a partnership of sorts.

However, workarounds aren’t something people should bank on. These, just like the frequent algorithm and layout changes that Facebook is known for, can change overnight as well.

The best advice in general is to not rely on third parties to keep your business alive. Whether or not you choose to leave Facebook altogether or Google-proof your business is up to you. If you build a brand that’s strong enough, loyal customers will still come to you and will still spread the word to their friends about the great service that they received with you.

Will Facebook Stay Relevant for Businesses With Small Budgets?

Only time will tell, but at the current moment, it doesn’t seem like it. This shouldn’t worry people all too much though. Facebook isn’t the be-all end-all advertising platform out there. Instead of focusing solely on one platform or all the social media platforms, figure out what social media platforms will work best for your business.

Having a clear objective in mind over what type of demographic you’re marketing to and the types of media you will be sharing can help your business not lose any money by advertising on sites such as Tumblr, according to a post on Mashable.

If you’re a media rich platform, advertising on Tumblr may be more beneficial than Twitter, for example.

Social media platforms are constantly changing. What works today may not work tomorrow, so it’s up to your business to keep evolving as well. It’s doubtful that Facebook will see a mass exodus of businesses anytime soon, so they’ll be relevant for a while longer.

Ultimately, whether or not you choose to participate is your choice.