With Facebook becoming such an integrated and assumed part of daily life for the average person, most businesses recognize the value of using Facebook to increase their business and brand reputation. Restaurants are no exception.

As the owner of a restaurant, bar, or eatery, it is critical that you put the power of social media to work for you!

Here are Key ways Restaurants can use Facebook Effectively:

1. Offer Interesting Content on Facebook

You need to connect with your community.  By this we mean the physically community where your restaurant is located and the radius your restaurant serves!

Offer new and relevant content continuously about not only your restaurant, but about your team, and your local area.  Special dishes, interesting information about menu items, or even loyalty discounts are a good starting point and should be part of your mix but go beyond that to what is happening in the community.

Did the local high school team just make it to a state championship?  Congratulate them!

Is their a community parade or event coming up?  Help promote it!

Is their a local non-profit you support?  Help get the word out about their work!

It’s NOT all about you.  An interesting Facebook Page connects with the heartbeat of your patrons.  What interests them?  This is what you can talk about on Facebook.

2. Post more. Plan Posts.

Post Fresh Content Daily! You really should post at least 3x a day!  Work ahead 1-3 days by planning and scheduling posts most of the posts.  Then mix into that spontaneous posts each day that are current and relevant.

For the scheduling ahead, you can use tools like Buffer, HootSuite, or Post Planner.

Space your Posts out! No one wants to get bombarded by a page with 4 posts in an hour.

Instead space out your posts for optimum times when your fans may be on Facebook such as mid-morning, just before or after lunch and early evening!

3. Identify Your Uniqueness

You need to answer this question: What makes you unique?

Once determined, make sure you use this in your messaging!

This is your voice, or put another way, your “style” of posting! Tailor your social media posts and updates accordingly. For instance, if the restaurant positions itself as a hangout place for pro basketball fans, actively reach out to area sports leagues and post about upcoming games and results from recent games.

4. Encourage Facebook Check-Ins

Make sure on Facebook your restaurant is a “Place” location in the category selections so that visitors can check-in.  This gets seen by their friends!

Need a Facebook Page Tune-Up?  Check out our Free eBook with 12 Steps to Update your Page!  Access Facebook Page Tune-up Guide >>

Facebook is popular because it shares authentic information from real people. A check-in or a great review by a friend carries credibility.

5. Share your Menu

In addition to having your menu on your website, make it pieces of it available in your social sharing of content and also make it available on a tab on your Facebook Page.

The goal is too make it accessible and easy to find wherever visitors are finding  you.

By posting about a new item on Facebook and then linking to the Facebook Page Tab, restaurants can draw in fans and visitors to their Facebook page.

6. Offer Deals and Contests to Grow your Email List and Create Buzz

Deals and contests can create engagement and attract visitors.  By then converting visitors to email subscribers by offering a discount coupon for joining your email list or hosting a random drawing of a Gift Certificate from those who enter, a restaurant can both help gain short-term attention and interest but also server longer term marketing goals.

The deal or contest offers quick incentive while the ability to utilize this to capture email addresses means your restaurant can then drip market to these folks over time to build further awareness, interest, and loyalty.

7. Eavesdrop

Well, I mean monitor and listen socially!

Closely related to asking for feedback is to proactively keeping track of what is being said about your restaurant on social media. Literally hundreds of applications like Hootsuite, ViralHeat, Sendible, and more and allow business to do exactly that, scouring blogs and social network posts, and extracting relevant items.

8. Be Visual!

Images communicate better and spark greater interaction than simply text posts.

Restaurants can reach more people by have a strong presence and posting great images of food and photos that tell stories on your Facebook Page.

An photo of your team celebrating, or of a new dish is soooo much more appealing than a long paragraph about it!

9. Enable Easy Social Sharing on your Website

Yes, your website is your “home base” and social media does not replace that.  Social media augments your site and by enabling fans to easily share information from your website, you empower fans to increase their social sharing and chatter about you!  Using WordPress? Add tools like the Digg Digg Plugin that easily adds social sharing buttons to each page and blog post!

Be sure to add your Facebook Page “Like us on Facebook” box to your website, as well as relevant buttons including “Follow us on Twitter” and more!

10. Ask for Feedback

The best way to increase engagement and keep the social pages ticking with fresh content is by asking for feedback.

The feedback could be on anything, ranging from the band who played last night to the new breadsticks.

Make sure, however, to interact with and respond to feedback, even negative feedback.  This can go miles in building trust and loyalty.  As well, identify how you have followed up afterward as well so that fans and followers know you acted on the feedback!

So there you have it!  10 ways to taste great success on Facebook with your restaurant!

Facebook offers savvy real estate agents and brokerage firms a great way to connect with their community and potential buyers.  The key is in providing long-term value.  It’s a fact that buying a house is not something a person does every month,  but every month someone is buying a house!

The social value lies in providing regular, valuable, consistent information.  By becoming a trusted source via your Facebook posts, and then offering easy access on Facebook to tools for home searching, real estate professionals can benefit from the power of social media to build connections, stay in front of users when they are not buying, and ultimately be the trusted source to go to when the time for buying and selling comes.

5 Keys Real Estate Professionals Should be Doing on Facebook

1. Post Helpful Content and Tips

While it is tempting to simply share every listing and post from your website in news feed posts,DON’T!  Remember that social media is about building relationships, being social, and offering value.  Users are on Facebook to connect and engage with things of interest.  Being too salesy all the time will not do it. A following and community can only be created if you actively seek out and share valuable content, yours and industry/community related, that inspires, informs, educates and connects.

Post on a regular schedule, such as 2-3 times per day at key times and in a way that invites Likes, Shares, and Comments.

2. Highlight Homes for Sale by Changing Your Cover Image

People are visual!  Social Media is more and more visual!  Images capture the eye. Now that Facebook no longer has a text limit of 20% on Cover Images, use the Cover Image regularly as a means of showcasing valuable items like a featured home.  This can be changed out weekly or 2x a week.  Consider using a Cover Image template to enable you to customize images quickly and be sure to edit the image to include a description and a link when it is posted.  Here’s 12 ideas for creating more buzz with your Cover Image.

3. Incorporate Images and Video in Posts

As noted, people are visual and the popularity of Facebook and Pinterest prove that people connect with images. If you want to quickly capture the attention of your fans or followers, add images that are eye-catching and pleasing to the eye. Also, consider using simple tools like Vine and Instagram’s Video tool along with Facebook Video and YouTube as ways to easily create shareable videos that display well on Facebook.

Another idea is to create real estate Infographics, showcase photos of homes or local attractions within your area, post visuals of market trends, and showcase community and school news.

4. Add your Featured Listings to a Facebook Tab

While I noted you should NOT share every listing from your website in your news feed posts, you can share some listing and link via a Smart URL to a tab where users can view the rest of yours posts!  Using a tool like TabSite’s WebSite ReSizer, it can take less than 10 minutes to add your website listings page to a custom tab and have it fit perfectly!

This add a great dimension of functionality to your fan page. When people are on Facebook, they want to stay on Facebook, and this allows them to do so by giving them the featured listing right on the Facebook page tab. Simply share a post about the property and include the Smart (mobile friendly) URL in the description so users can easily access it.

5. Incorporate your MLS web page to a Facebook Tab

In addition to a featured list tab, why not give visitors on Facebook full access to your website’s MLS search right on a tab!  Once again, the TabSite Website ReSizer can be used to easily add your MLS search to your Facebook page.  This can set you apart from so many other realtors and give you a key advantage!

Adding the web page is as simple as adding the URL, dragging the sizer to the appropriate view and publishing to your Facebook page.  There’s no need to spend thousands of dollars on a separate feed, just use your website MLS listing in your Facebook page

BONUS TIP: Add a Email Sign-up Tab

By adding a Email sign-up tab to your Facebook page and making users aware of it periodically through posts and tips, real estate professionals can grow their email list and then reach potential buyers and sellers via this means as well.

https://www.tabsite.com/blog/5-ways-real-estate-professionals-can-use-facebook-to-increase-sales/

 

Since 2010 we have worked with over 85,000 Facebook pages.  We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly happen to businesses on Facebook, mostly by their own bad decisions, or decisions made out of ignorance.

Today, the vast majority of businesses have a page and it’s not a “Profile” masquerading as a page (that’s a basic 101 mistake) but a true Facebook business page. However, many business owners have not been closely connected to the creation or maintenance of their Facebook page and that’s a big “no-no” which can cause them a lot of unnecessary problems and hassles.

The fact is, business owners need to be aware of the status of their Facebook page just like they need to ensure their website domain name doesn’t expire!  

What could happen you ask?  

What if you lost control and can’t access to post on the Page as the Page?

What if all the “Likes” and community interaction were gone because no one active with the company now has access, therefore requiring you to abandon the Page and the custom URL?

What if you as owner, don’t have control at all over the posts on the page that bears your company name?

You don’t want this to happen! 

Here are 5 “Never Do This!” Items for Business Owners:

1. Never make one individual the sole Page Admin Manager of a company Facebook page.

Maybe the Page was created by an intern, or perhaps by a employee.  If this employee ever leaves your organization, your page is essentially out the door with them. Not good!

How many Admins are there on your Facebook page?  What roles do they have?  Are you as owner a Manager?

2. Never give an employee access to your personal Facebook profile.

This is like your Passport or Drivers License.  It’s YOURS and FOR YOU.  If you give someone access to your Facebook profile or any online identity that is linked directly to your real-world identity, you’re taking a major risk.  There is NO NEED to give them access to your profile.  Pages can have multiple managers, and they should! We’ll get into the types of managers further on down in this post.

3. Never allow your hired Marketing Agency to create your Facebook Page and not add you as a Manager. 

We’ve seen it  happen too many times.  The business relationships ends and the Page manager access has basically slipped out of the country quietly and there is no forwarding address!  DON’T DO IT!  Yes, you can add the agency but YOU should remain as Manager as well!  I did mention already that you can have more than 1 Page Manager.  I think it’s worth repeating!A

4.  Never, ever, ever create a “dummy” Facebook account and name it “My Company Name”.

Facebook will automatically give that profile the URL “Facebook.com/MyCompanyName” and you will not be able to claim it for your business page URL! Doh!

As well, creating a dummy account is against Facebook terms.  They shut down dummy accounts as they find them!  Yes, they do.  We’ve seen it happen.

5. Don’t create a Business-Only Facebook Page Not Connected to a Profile.

Facebook, for some reason, gives pages the ability, if they want, to create a Page and the only login is the “Business Page” login.  It’s not tied to a profile.  This seems smart to some, but it’s not!

Read more: https://www.tabsite.com/blog/5-facebook-nevers/

As Facebook builds its ads business and gives advertisers more ways to reach different audiences, a new lexicon has emerged.

The social network has invented terms like Sponsored Stories, Page Post Ads and Promoted Posts, but it doesn’t always explain them or maintain consistent usage over time, especially since the same ads serve different levels of advertisers, who purchase them through varying channels.

Here we’ll break down the main categories of Facebook ads that appear in News Feed and the desktop sidebar: Sponsored Stories, Page Post Ads, Promoted Posts and Marketplace Ads. Understand the difference in what the units look like, how they are purchased, who they can be shown to and what goals they achieve.

Sponsored Stories are built around user activity. Advertisers simply pay to highlight an action that users have already taken on the social network or within a Facebook-connected app. That action is shown to a user’s friends, either in the sidebar or in News Feed. Sponsored Stories cannot be used to reach an audience that is not connected to the page or app through a friend.

Advertisers do not have any creative control over these ad types because they are generated from an organic user action. They might also include a page or app’s current profile photo.

The most common Sponsored Stories are “Page Like” stories, but advertisers can sponsor check-ins, offer claims, Likes on individual posts, or any custom Open Graph action. For example, Doritos has sponsored stories about when users “vote for a finalist” in its Crash the Super Bowl app.

Companies can also sponsor stories about when users share links from their domain. For example, when a user posts an Amazon link on Facebook, Amazon pays to show that story to more of a user’s friends, as seen to the right.

The goal of Sponsored Stories to get more users to take the same action that a friend has. If a page wants Likes, it can show Page Like Sponsored Stories. If a retailer wants more users to claim an offer, it can show Offer Claimed Sponsored Stories. If a company wants more sweepstakes entries in its custom Open Graph app, it can create Sponsored Stories about users “entering a sweepstakes.”

Most Sponsored Stories can be created through the self-serve ad tool, Power Editor or API, however, Open Graph Sponsored Stories require advertisers to work with a third-party provider that has access to the API.

Sponsored Stories have been around since January 2011, but when Facebook first began using the term, it also encompassed what later became known as Page Post Ads. The change has led to some lingering confusion, but ads that are directly derived from page posts are no longer considered Sponsored Stories. We’ll discuss Page Post Ads in the next section. The defining factor of Sponsored Stories to remember is that they are paid promotion of organic user activity.

Page Post Ads

Page Post Ads are advertisements that begin as posts on a fan page but get additional paid distribution among fans, friends of fans, or non fans within News Feed or the sidebar, as a result of creating campaigns in Facebook’s ad tool, Power Editor or API.

Page Post Ads can be links, photos, videos, offers, events, questions or statuses, allowing for a lot of creative freedom. And unlike Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts, these ads can be shown to anyone on Facebook, even if users are not connected to the page themselves or through a friend.

Page Post Ads are ideal for engagement and content marketing, as well as promoting events and offers, but they are not always as effective for fan acquisition. For example, a Page Post Ad might give users the option to play a video, like the video, comment on it and share it, in addition to the option to Like the page itself. This is different from Sponsored Stories, which give users one clear call to action.

Facebook no longer uses the exact term “page post ads” in its self-serve ad interface, though it continues to use it in educational materials and the more advanced Power Editor tool. Within the self-serve dashboard, the company has rebuilt the ad creation flow to focus on objectives rather than specific terms that less experienced advertisers might not be familiar with. Instead of asking advertisers to “create a Page Post Ad,” for example, it suggests that page owners “Promote page posts.” This action creates a Page Post Ad.

Promoted Posts

Promoted Posts are page posts that get additional paid reach in News Feed among fans and friends of fans as a result of using the page’s Promote button.

Promoted Posts are similar to Page Post Ads because they originate as a piece of content on a page, but they are bought through the Promote button on a post itself rather than through the ad tool, Power Editor or API. The pricing structure is different as well. With Promoted Posts, page owners pay a flat rate to reach a given number of users. For Sponsored Stories, Page Post Ads and other Facebook ad types, advertisers pay per impression or per click.

Another difference between Promoted Posts and Page Post Ads is that Promoted Posts are only shown to a page’s existing fans, with an option to reach friends of fans as well. Page Post Ads have more flexibility in that they can reach non-fans or only friends of fans. Promoted Posts also do not have allow for interest- or category-based targeting, which other Facebook ad types do.

The goal of these ads is to reach more of a company’s existing audience and some of their friends. These help get a page’s content seen but generally do not drive new Likes.

Promoted Posts are shown exclusively in News Feed, both on desktop and mobile, whereas Sponsored Stories and Page Post Ads can be run in the sidebar.

Marketplace Ads

Marketplace Ads are desktop sidebar advertisements, which include a headline, body copy and image. These ads can lead to a page or app on Facebook, as well as to third-party websites. Marketplace Ads are the only ads eligible for Facebook Exchange retargeting inventory.

Marketplace Ads that aren’t bought through the Facebook Exchange can include a call to action, such as a Like button or Use Now button, as well as social context about how many users Like a page or use an app.

We saw Facebook testing “Page Like” Marketplace Ads in News Feedlast year, and these are now beginning to appear in the mobile web feed.

http://goo.gl/M4Yw4G

 

How do you buy Facebook Ads?

There are four ways to purchase Facebook ads. Facebook’s native solutions, Ads Create and Power Editor, are the most common. The Ads API is also useful if you’re an agency or big brand (as an FB Ad Buying Tool from a third-party vendor).

Questions Community Managers Should Be Asking: Which of my posts need money behind them? Which are still performing well and converting organically?

Why do it?

• Huge user base: Facebook has over 1 billion users. That’s almost 20% of the earth’s population.

• Advanced targeting options let you reach the people who matter:

1. Partner Categories let you target based on a user’s lifestyle and purchasing history, even those that aren’t your existing customers (yet).

2. Custom Audiences let you target existing leads from your CRM database (i.e. your email list, phone number list, Facebook UID list, and Facebook App UID list).

3. Lookalike Audiences let you take it a step further, creating an audience of users similar to the users within your Custom Audience or using your website visitors, app users, and existing Facebook fans.

• It’s cost-effective: Compared to traditional advertising (like TV and magazine), Facebook Ads are extremely cost effective. There is a minimum spend of just $1 per day and Facebook had the lowest cost per 1,000 impressions in advertising history – just $.25 per 1,000 impressions. That’s only 1% of the CPM cost for TV.

• It compliments Facebook’s algorithm. Using paid media lets you extend time decayso more people have the opportunity to interact with your content. In addition, high-quality and well-targeted content is more likely to drive an action, thus boosting a user’s affinity with your fan page and making them more likely to see your content in the future.

• You gotta. As organic reach decreases, this is a necessary move for maintaining/growing Facebook presence–and Community Managers are on the front line of knowing what audiences respond to positively and are repelled by.

Read more http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/04/08/understanding-facebooks-new-ad-structure-how-a-community-manager-can-impact-ad-spend/