CREATING A WORDPRESS PAGE
1. To get started adding a new page to your WordPress site, find the Pages menu in the WordPress Dashboard Navigation menu. Click Add new.
The WordPress page editor looks nearly identical to the post editor, except for a few different boxes located on the right side of the screen.
2. Add the title of the page, like About. Note: If you have pretty permalinks set up, the title of your page will also be the URL slug.
3. Next, add some content.
4. The Publish section of the page editor is exactly the same as for writing posts. When you’re ready to publish, you can either publish immediately, save this or a draft, or schedule the page to be published later.
5. The Page Attributes section applies a parent page and template to your new page. For the Parent section, you can arrange your pages into hierarchies. For example, you could create this new page with additional pages under it. There are no limits to how many levels you can nest pages.
6. Some WordPress themes have custom page templates, so the next Template section allows you to apply a template to your new page.
7. The Order box allows you to order your page numerically. Pages are usually ordered alphabetically, but you can choose your own order by entering a number in this field.
8. Preview the page one last time, then click Publish. You’ve added a new page to your WordPress site.
The Add New Posts page can also be found from the + New link in the WordPress Admin Bar, also.
Click the Add New link.
Now you’ll see the Add New Post page where you can create your first post.
The first box is where you’ll want to enter the title of your post.
Next is the Post formatting section or post editor. This is where you’ll actually type the content of your post.
If you look on the right side of the box, you’ll see two tabs. There are two modes of editing posts: Visual and Text.
The Visual tab will bring up the visual WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG just means “what you see is what you get.” Here you’ll see a formatting toolbar with lots of options for formatting your posts. If you’re familiar with Microsoft Word or any other word processing software, most of these icons should look familiar.
If you click the Text tab, this will reveal a plain-text HTML version of the post editor. This version of the post editor is for editing the HTML code of your post. For most users, the Visual editor is the easiest way to write posts.
At the top of the right column on this screen you’ll see the Publish box. Here, your can save your post as a draft if you’d like to save it for later. If you click the Preview button, you can get a preview of how the post will look once it’s published.
The Status of the post will show if the post has been published, saved as a draft, if it’s pending review of if it’s been scheduled.
The next two links show the visibility of the post — or what visitors will be able to see your post. The Publish line shows whether the post will be published immediately or at a later date.
The next section are for categories and tags assigned to your WordPress post. We’ll cover these two topics in more detail later.
If you’d like to change the screen options for your post editor, just click the screen options tab in the upper right hand corner. Expand this to reveal all the options that can be displayed on the post editor screen.
Again from the post editor, you can also drag or drop the order of these boxes to customize how we want them arranged on the page.
If you ever need help while you’re on the Add New Posts page, just click the Help tab in the upper right corner. From here, you’ll be able to get a reminder for how to customize your post display, tips for adding a post title and using the post editor, inserting media and settings for publishing and discussion.
Managing Comments in WordPress: The Comments Page
Managing comments in WordPress is quite similar to the way posts and pages are managed.
From the WordPress Dashboard, visit the Comments page. This screen is customizable in the same ways as other WordPress management screens.
A yellow row means the comment is waiting for you to moderate it. You can act on comments using the on-hover action links or the Bulk Actions.
In the Author column, in addition to the author’s name, email address, and blog URL, the commenter’s IP address is shown. Clicking on this link will show you all the comments made from this IP address.
In the Comment column, each comment includes Submitted on information, followed by the date and time the comment was left on your site. Clicking the date/time link will take you to that comment on your live site. Hovering over any comment gives you options to approve, reply (and approve), quick edit, edit, spam mark, or trash that comment.
In the In Response To column, there are three elements. The text is the name of the post that comment is assigned to, and links to the post editor for that entry.
The View Post link leads back to that post on your live site. This small bubble with the number shows the number of approved comments that post has received. If the bubble is gray, you have moderated all comments for that post. If it is blue, there are pending comments. Clicking the bubble will filter the comments screen to show only comments on that post.
Managing Comments in WordPress: Dashboard Home Screen
Another way to manage comments is from the WordPress Dashboard home screen. Here you’ll see recent comments and you can quickly and easily approve, reply, edit, mark as spam or trash by hovering over these links.
WordPress Comment Settings
Don’t forget you can change your Comment or Discussion settings from within the WordPress settings menu. This page allows you to make changes to the details of comments made on your site, plus the ability to blacklist comments to help manage spam comments.
WordPress Posts vs Pages
A WordPress post is what makes up the blog aspect of your site.
- These are generally news or informational updates about a certain topic or talking point.
- Posts are listed in reverse chronological order and can be tagged, categorized and even archived on your site.
- WordPress posts are what make up the RSS content of your WordPress blog. So, when someone subscribes to your RSS feed, your posts will be the content that’s delivered to them.
- Think of the posts at the news portion of your site. They’re dynamic and constantly changing the content your end users sees.
WordPress Pages are similar to posts in that they have a title and body text, but they are different because:
- they are generally reserved for static content or information.
- Examples of this would be an About Me or Contact Us page.
- Pages are not listed by date and can’t be categorized or tagged like WordPress posts,
- Pages can have a hierarchy, which means you can nest pages under other pages by making one the “Parent” of the other, thus creating a group of pages.
- Due to their static nature, pages aren’t included in RSS feeds and won’t have date or time publishing
Scheduling WordPress Posts
This WordPress posts scheduling feature is found in the Publish box on the upper right side of the post editor page.
To schedule a post for publication, click the edit link next to Publish Immediately. You’ll now see a drop-down option to select the month, date and year to publish the post, even the exact hour and minute.
For example, if you’d like to publish this post at 8 a.m. tomorrow, select tomorrow’s date, set the time for 8 a.m., and click Ok. You’ll now see the Schedule button has appeared.
Click the Schedule button and you’ll see the status of this post has changed to scheduled with details for the exact date and time it will be published to your blog.
If you change your mind and want to publish this post immediately, click the Edit link next to the scheduled publish time. Just update the time to today’s date and the current time and this will immediately publish the post.
Exploring the WordPress Dashboard
The WordPress Dashboard allows you to control all of the behind-the-scene details of managing your site. Once you find your way around the dashboard, you’ll realize it’s really easy to use and navigate.
First we’ll take a look at the dashboard home screen. After you first log in, you’ll see a top welcome box from WordPress with some quick links to help you get started.
The next section is the Right Now section. Here you’ll see the number of post, pages, categories and tags for your site’s content. You’ll also see discussion information for comments, like the total number of comments, and numbers for those approved, pending or marked as spam.
In the Right now section, you’ll also see what WordPress theme you’re currently running on this site plus the number of widgets and your current version of WordPress.
The Recent Comments section shows you just that, recent comments. Here you can quickly unapprove or approve comments, reply, edit, mark as spam or send to trash, too.
The Incoming Links section shows incoming links to your website or blog found by Google Blog Search. Incoming links are when another blog links back to your site. If you have a brand new WordPress site, you probably won’t have any incoming links.
In the Plugins section, you’ll find information on the most popular, newest plugins and recently updated plugins from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.
If you scroll back up to the second column, you’ll find the Quick Press section of the WordPress Dashboard. QuickPress will allow you to publish or save a draft of a post straight from this screen, which is great for quickly publishing content. You just won’t have all of the formatting options like you do in the WordPress post editor.
The Next section is for recent drafts of posts. Once you start creating posts and if they’re saved as drafts, the five most recent drafts you’ve started be visible here.
The last two sections are the WordPress Blog and other WordPress News. These are Updates from the official WordPress project and the WordPress Planet feed.
If you’d like to customize what sections you see from the WordPress dashboard, visit the Screen Options tab on the top right side of your screen. Click the arrow to expand this section and you’ll see checkboxes for each of the sections usually included in the WordPress Dashboard. To remove any of the sections, just unclick the checkbox beside the section you’d like to hide. You can also choose the number of columns for the screen layout, too.
If we return to the Dashbaord Home, you can also expand each of the sections by clicking the arrow to the right. You can also drag and drop the boxes to change the order.
In addition to the WordPress Dashboard Home screen, the other major component of the WordPress Dashboard is the left-hand navigation menu. This navigation menu provides links to all of the WordPress administration screens for posts, the media library, pages, comments, appearance options, plugins, users, tools and settings. We’ll explore the rest of these menu items in more detail in the upcoming videos.
If you ever find yourself needing help, just click the Help tab in the upper corner. Click the arrow to expand and you’ll now see helpful information that walks through the overview, navigation, layout and content of the WordPress Dashboard. From here, you can also find a link to the WordPress.org Codex documentation on the Dashboard and to the support forums.
#1: Align Content Development With Social Media Metrics and Goals
Understand the goals of your company’s social media content delivery to help you develop a more attainable strategy.
Jayson DeMers suggests, “First you need to know what to measure. The end goals dictate the measurement metric.”
He offers metrics for four social media goals:
- If you’re looking to generate traffic, your metric should be: unique visitors from social websites where you’ve run your social media campaigns.
- If you’re looking to create a following, your metric should be: subscribers, followers on your social channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
- If you’re looking to generate interaction, your metric should be: quantity and type of commentary (Facebook comments, Twitter replies/mentions).
- If you’re looking to generate revenue (which is the ultimate purpose), your metric should be: the precise dollar value of every lead a social post generates.
Keep this information in mind when crafting your social media content.
#2: Beef Up Your Content Strategy With a Big-Brand Mindset
Small businesses can learn valuable lessons from the big-brand approach to social media.
Rick Mulready suggests three things big brands do very well that small businesses can emulate:
- Find where their customers talk and “go deep.”
- Create content that people want to talk about.
- Use social media to listen to customers.
Starbucks, with over 34 million fans on Facebook, is a good example.
On Thursday, June 6, they posted a Facebook offer “Enjoy a Grande Iced Coffee, Iced Tea, or Starbucks Refreshers Beverage for $1 on June 7.” The update was shared by 13,931 people and received 1,553 comments. The offer was not tweeted to their 3,852,454 Twitter followers.
By promoting the offer on Facebook, where they have a significantly larger following, Starbucks leveraged the promotion on a platform where they were sure to get higher visibility, giving followers an incentive to follow the brand.
Starbucks knows where and what their customers will talk about!
Use a big-brand approach to engage your social media followers.
#3: Concentrate on Increasing Daily Updates
Ensuring that your posts and updates have a good chance to be seen by your target audience is an integral part of a content strategy.
Leo Widrich offers 3 key tactics:
- Frequency: Post around 5-10 times a day on Twitter and 1-4 times a day on Facebook for optimal outcome.
- Timing: Almost all research studies highlight the main work hours from 8 am to 8 pm as good times to tweet and post to Facebook.
- Multiple sites: Post to multiple social sites, in addition to your own blog or website.
Create a frequent and reliable presence on social networks. Image source: iStockPhoto.
Pay attention to frequency, timing and multiple sites, and you’ll increase the odds of achieving higher levels of social engagement.
#4: Delve Into Data From Social Media Channels
Data from social channels (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and blogs) can be overwhelming unless you have clear goals to guide what you’re looking for and what you’ll do with the information once you find it.
Douglas Karr points out, “The sheer volume of social media data makes it incredibly difficult to analyze.”
He offers five practical ways you can use social data to benefit your business:
- Gauge the real-time market mood.
- Identify relevant issues and content.
- Determine user interests.
- Provide internal operational metrics.
- Execute competitive research.
Explore social data with an actionable plan in mind.
#5: Engage in Real Interactions
Lana Bandoim writes, “Social media engagement is often defined as the real interactions that happen on these networks.” She points out that social media engagement relies on daily interactions among users to survive. While autoposting tools are one way to communicate, more businesses are beginning to understand that engaging with their audiences in real conversations will bring them better results and add more value to their social streams.
Engage with users in real-time conversations. Image source: iStockPhoto.
Be available to your audience in real time, when you can have more meaningful back-and-forth conversations.
#6: Follow Facebook’s Changes
Got the hang of your Facebook Page? Enjoy it while you can, because based on Facebook’s history, the only thing that’s certain is that Facebook will change.
A Google search for the words “Facebook changes” brings up a great number of results with a range of topics such as changes to timeline, cover photo policy, implications for merchants, mobile layout and much more.
Rachel Sprung suggests 5 ways marketers can keep updated on Facebook changes:
- Follow Facebook’s business changes for regular updates.
- Follow the Facebook tag on TechCrunch.
- Set a Google Alert for Facebook updates.
- Follow new posts on AllFacebook.
- Follow social media and tech experts.
No one wants to have their Page change features on them without having ample time to prepare. Keep up to date with Facebook developments to make sure you don’t miss out on the changes coming down the pike.
#7: Get Acquainted With the New Google Analytics Social Reports
Google‘s new standalone reports, Data Hub Activity and Trackbacks, give marketers more in-depth insights into social networks and how users respond to a business’s content.
As Google describes:
The Data Hub Activity report shows you how people are talking about and engaging with your site content on social networks. You can see the most recent URLs people shared, how and where they shared (via a “reshare” on Google+, for example), and what they said.
The Trackbacks report shows the sites that are linking to your content, and in which context. This can help you replicate successful content and build relationships with those users who frequently link to your site.
Discover what and where your visitors are sharing.
Check out the new Google Analytics reports and apply what you’ve learned to your content development strategy.
#8: Help Users Find Your Content With Hashtags
Why should businesses care about hashtags? Steve Cooper sums it up with five reasons:
- Promotions—hashtags make it easy to track a promotion’s activity across many social platforms.
- Unification—you can track a hashtag across all the major networks or filter them individually using new tools such as Tagboard.
- Conversations—giving a customer your website URL doesn’t make it easy to begin a conversation, but hashtags do.
- Targeting—unlike going after a general web surfer on the open web, people who use hashtags are likely to engage in social conversations and therefore are more likely to share a positive experience they’ve had with your brand once you’ve broken through.
- Innovation—because they’re so flexible, simple and ubiquitous, more businesses are able to find creative ways to add power behind the hashtag.
A hashtag search on Tagboard will help you follow all the conversations.
Tagboard filters hashtags on major networks.
Use hashtags to include your content in active public conversations.
#9: Introduce Content With Infographics
Infographics are defined as graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.
Dragan Mestrovic illuminates the benefits of infographics in four persuasive points:
- Infographics are shared on the web, Twitter and Facebook more often than other content online.
- Infographics are easy to understand, consume and share.
- On Twitter, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon, infographics get more shares than other content.
- Marketers love infographics because they offer an easy and powerful viral marketing tool to spread the word about your company’s products and services.
Infographic of infographics
Infographics are a great way to synthesize information simply and visually as seen in the above image from Vsual.ly. When done well, an infographic is a perfect poster-child for quick and effective dissemination of information via social media.
#10: Justify Frequent Updates and Posts
Why is it that some businesses are posting fast and furiously and others are crawling far behind? Chances are that the businesses posting more frequently had to justify to management the importance of maintaining an active presence.
As we discussed in #5, autoposting does not offer a suitable alternative to real-live human beings who can respond to comments and post breaking news updates.
A tool such as How often do you tweet could shed some insight:
Does this look like you?
Is this your competitor? Eye-opening, isn’t it?
Monitor your social media engagement compared with your competitors’. Share the results with management to help justify a request to dedicate more time and resources to the company’s social media efforts.
#11: Keep Klout in Perspective
Klout utilizes Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wikipedia and Instagramdata to create a Klout user profile that is assigned a “Klout score,” a numerical value between 1 and 100.
Many critics suggest Klout scores aren’t representative of the influence a person has and discount the scores, as well as the thinking behind Klout.
Mark Schaefer offers an alternate view: “The ability to create and move content is the absolute key to online influence. So think about this—to the extent that you could actually measure that, wouldn’t you also be creating an indicator of relative influence?”
Klout gets a lot of buzz on social media.
When it comes to Klout scores, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead, ask what you can learn from your competitor’s higher score and how you can do what they’re doing with their content.
#12: Look to the Future of Social Media
The question of social media’s ability to capture leads has been at the forefront of marketers’ minds from the beginning. Twitter is the latest network to offer an approach that will let marketers be more proactive with lead generation cards.
Twitter describes lead generation cards this way: “[The cards] make it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share an email address with your business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form.
“When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you.”
At the time of this writing, Twitter stated, “Currently lead generation cards will only be available to our managed clients; we have plans to launch this card globally and to small- and medium-sized businesses soon.”
Information is shared securely on a Twitter lead generation card without users having to leave Twitter.
Stay updated on the availability of Twitter’s lead generation cards so you’ll be ready to use them.
#13: Make Your Blog Mobile-Friendly
I don’t know about you, but I seem to be visiting more and more websites on my mobile phone these days. If I land on a page that isn’t mobile-friendly and it’s slow and difficult to navigate, I’m out of there.
Jon Young provides 8 tips to make your website mobile-friendly:
- Only give visitors content they need.
- Carefully plan your layout.
- Landing pages should be simple.
- Design for multiple browsers and device compatibility.
- Always include social media icons.
- Automate the experience and use mobile redirects.
- Provide a link to your full site.
- Usability should be top priority.
By using Mobile Meter, we can see what Social Media Examiner looks like on mobile devices.
Don’t give readers any reason to leave your site. Be mobile-ready and -friendly.
#14: Network in All the Right Places
What social networks do your customers favor? Are they on Twitter and Facebook, but haven’t embraced Google+ yet?
Ryan Little writes, “One recent study on social media usage revealed that the average user has two social media accounts. While some users find pleasure in multiple networks, there are people who have found a single community they love and stick with it, even when the temptations of a new social network arise. And there are others who have used various networks and narrowed their usage down until only one platform remained.”
The situation gets a little more complex for businesses. It’s important to keep in mind that your customers may favor one network today and in six months discover that another meets their needs better.
Follow your customers and prospects so you can network in all the right places.
#15: Outsource Content Development as Needed
Can your business keep up to date with all the tasks associated with maintaining social presences (e.g., reading and sharing good content, responding to users’ comments, asking questions to help engage your audience)?
Tim Devaney and Tom Stein write, “Studies show it takes a midsize company about 32 hours a month to capably handle a single social media platform.”
According to Eve Mayer, “The companies that have the most effective social media communications are those that have a combination of internal and external people doing social media.” She advises businesses to take several steps toward a successful social campaign:
- Decide what you want to achieve.
- Don’t spread yourself too thin.
- Keep some social media in-house.
- Send some social media to a consultant, someone who understands social media and can apply that knowledge across many different platforms.
How many hours a month does it realistically take for your business to maintain social presences? Don’t let the shortage of internal resources hamper your online capabilities. Outsource social media to cover your bases.
#16: Present Your Human Side With Photos
Photos and other types of visual content are highly shareable on social networks. Pam Moore suggests that when you post photos of your team, it helps to show your business as a human brand and build relationships with your community.
Humans need breaks!
Social media has made it possible for you to share information about your business in a multitude of ways. Photos can show your serious, productive, silly, creative, successful and charitable sides—but above all, be sure to expose your human side.
#17: Question Readers for More Engagement
Questions are a good example of engaging content and have become a frequent go-to tactic, especially on platforms such as Facebook. Belinda Whittaker suggests three types of good questions to ask:
- Pure fan engagement questions to help tap into the interests and lifestyles of your fans.
- Market and competitive analysis questions to generate conversations and engage with possible leads who are interested in buying that product.
- Product/service feedback questions that can serve as a fast focus group to find what people like most and what areas you can expand into.
Are you asking your readers questions? When they answer, do you reply?
#18: Replicate Your Brand Identity From Platform to Platform
Let’s say you joined Facebook in 2008 and Google+ in 2012. A difference of four years can seem like eternity in the world of social media. Regardless of the year, you’ll want to make sure you have a consistent brand identity today.
Desmond Wong examined how Google, Target, Etsy, Coca-Cola, Disney, Amazon, New Yorker magazine and SEOmoz approach brand consistency across multiple social media platforms. Factors included how they use design and graphics in unison across platforms, and whether they use consistent colors, fonts, icon styles and logos.
If you’re in doubt about whether you demonstrate a consistent brand experience, take a look at all of your pages side by side and see if there are any changes you need to make.
#19: Strengthen In-Person Events With Social Media Promotion
At times you may wonder about the relationship between in-person events and social media, and how they’re able to coexist.
Jay Baer describes 7 ways to use social media to promote in-person events:
- Engage—encourage potential attendees to interact with you early on by crowdsourcing feedback.
- Intrigue—create an event page on event listing sites (e.g., Facebook events, Eventbrite).
- Invigorate potential attendees with videos, blog posts, press releases, Twitter list of attendees, etc.
- Integrate—pick a hashtag for the event to get people talking.
- Inform—ask attendees to vote on session suggestions via text messages, consider QR codes on badges.
- Propagate—stream live video of your event.
- Aggregate—spread the conference presentations as widely as possible; use email links on your website and publish on SlideShare.
SMMW13 highly invigorated attendees.
In-person events, combined with online social networking, provide terrific opportunities for businesses to reap the benefits of both worlds.
#20: Talk With Team Members to Keep Up Momentum and Morale
None of us should work in a vacuum. We need to know what’s working and what isn’t. But sometimes the people seeing the analytics aren’t necessarily the ones who are managing the company’s online presences.
Chris Heiler suggests that one critical way to keep your social media team engaged is to provide them with updates on goals. As he says, “You need to keep them updated by sharing your successes with them. Has your website traffic increased significantly since putting together your social media team? Is your blog generating more qualified leads?”
To garner support, show team members the results of their efforts.
#21: Use a Conversational Tone to Engage Readers
Social media has changed the way businesses communicate publicly. In fact, we’re often advised to avoid stiff and stodgy business writing and encouraged to adopt a more conversational tone. And yet sometimes we’re at a loss to know what that means for our business.
Courtney Seiter suggests you explore your culture, community and conversation as you develop your social media voice. As she says, “Take us inside your brand’s experience… listen to the way your community voices their feelings, speak their language, on their terms… and then communicate with personality and authenticity. No strong-arming or hard selling, just talking in a way that’s comfortable, conversational and relatable.”
Listen to your community. Image source: iStockPhoto.
Use a conversational tone to make your content feel more authentic and engaging to readers.
#22: Visit a Number of Search Engines to Find the Perfect Image
With all the attention images receive on social media, it stands to reason that businesses will be on the lookout for interesting visuals.
Joshua Lockhart provides a list of six visual search engines to help you find the image you want. He suggests TinEye, CC Search, Compfight, FlickrStorm, WeSEE and Google Image Search.
Visual search engines expand your search capability (e.g., on TinEye you can even search for images by color!).
Take a few minutes and check out the visual search engines. When you find one great image you hadn’t previously come across, it will make a difference.
#23: Widen Your Writing Style With Online Tools
When you’re busy writing online content, it may feel like you don’t have the time to stop and look into new writing tools. But when you do, you’re apt to find a treasure trove of useful tips.
That’s how I felt when I came across Sherice Jacob‘s unique list of apps, websites and software programs for online writers: WordCounter, Cliche Finder, Creativity Portal, Unstuck, ZenWriter, Byword, Readability, and SychroEdit.
With Wordcounter, you can count words on your iPhone.
Writing tools can help recharge your battery while fulfilling specific needs.
#24: (E)xpand Your Article With Relevant Tips
Online readers often gravitate to tips-related articles. A search on the keyword “tips” produced 30,400,000 global monthly searches. Suggested keyword terms included every imaginable type of “tips;” for example, photography, makeup, Sudoku, travel, weight loss. Regardless of the industry, people are often looking for tips.
Include tips articles in your content marketing plan for your business to interest new readers.
#25: Yield to Your Customer’s Journey
Social channels differ in the roles they play in the customer’s journey towards making a purchase.
Lee Odden writes, “Understanding the customer experience from awareness to consideration to purchase folds well into the core principle of Optimize—to empathize with your customer and understand how they discover, consume and act on information. By doing so, you can create a practical digital marketing plan that optimizes for attraction, engagement and conversion.”
Social channels differ in their roles in the customer’s journey towards purchase.
Check out Google’s Customer Journey tool to see the differences by channels and industries.
#26: Zero In on Your Customer’s Interests and Needs
What do your customers care about? What information will help them in their day-to-day work or make their lives easier and more successful?
If you’re going to go to great lengths to craft and publish content, keep your customer’s interests and needs front of mind.
The Ultimate Checklist for Creating & Optimizing Facebook Ads
Facebook offers a wide variety of paid ad options and placements, but all ads can be broken down into three elements:
- Campaigns. The campaign houses all of your assets.
- Ad sets. If you’re targeting separate audiences with different characteristics, you’ll need an individual ad set for each.
- Ads. Your actual ads live within your ad sets. Each ad set can hold a variety of ads that vary in color, copy, images, etc.
With that terminology out of the way, let’s dive in to creating an ad.
Determine the most appropriate editor.
Facebook offers users two different tools for creating a paid ad: the Ads Manager and the Power Editor. When deciding which one is the best fit for you, you’ll want to consider both your company size and the number of ads you plan to run at once.
While the Ads Manager best suits most companies, the Power Editor serves as a tool for larger advertisers who are looking for more precise control over a variety of campaigns. For the sake of this article, we’re going to detail how to create an ad using the Ads Manager. (For more on how to create an ad using the Power Editor, check out this step-by-step article from Kissmetrics.)
Choose an objective.
Facebook’s Ads Manager, like many social media advertising networks, is designed with your campaign objective in mind. Before getting started, Ads Manager will prompt you to choose an objective for your campaign:
There are 10 different objectives to choose from. The list includes everything from sending people to your website to getting installs of your app to raising attendance at your event.
By choosing one of these objectives, you’re giving Facebook a better idea of what you’d like to do so they can present you with the best-suited ad options. Facebook’s ad optionsinclude:
- Page Post Engagements
- Page Likes
- Click to Website
- Website Conversions
- App Installs
- App Engagement
- Event Responses
- Offer Claims
- Video Views
- Local Awareness
Let’s say, for sake of this post, that you’re looking to drive more traffic to your website. When you select this option, Facebook will prompt you to enter the URL you’re looking to promote. If you’re using marketing automation software, be sure to create a unique tracking URL with UTM parameters for this to ensure that you’ll be able to keep track of traffic and conversions from this ad. For HubSpot customers, this can be done using the Tracking URL Builder.
Once selected, Facebook will then display the ad option that makes the most sense in terms of achieving this objective.
Choose your audience.
If you’re just starting out with paid advertising on Facebook, it’s likely that you’ll have to experiment with several different targeting options until you reach an audience that fits just right.
To help you narrow your focus, Facebook’s targeting criteria are accompanied by an audience definition gauge. This tool — located to the right of the audience targeting fields — takes all of your selected properties into consideration in order to come up with a potential reach number.
If you’re wavering between choosing a specific audience over a broad one, consider your objective. If you’re looking to drive traffic, you’ll probably want to focus on the type of people you know will be interested in your offering. However, if you’re looking to build brand awareness or promote a widely appealing offer, feel free to focus on a more general audience.
Facebook’s built-in targeting is vast, including options such as:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Languages
- Relationship
- Education
- Work
- Financial
- Home
- Ethnic Affinity
- Generation
- Parents
- Politics (U.S. only)
- Life Events
- Interests
- Behaviors
- Connections
You also have the option to select a Custom Audience — this allows you to target people on Facebook who are in your company’s contact database, visited a page on your website that has a tracking pixel, or use your app or game. To learn more about how to set up an Custom Audience on Facebook, check out these instructions. (And for more on the specifics of these criteria, visit this Facebook targeting resource.)
Once you find a group that responds well to your ads, Facebook allows you to save these audiences to be used again later — so you may not need to dive into this step once you’ve been running Facebook ads for a while.
Set your budget.
Facebook offers advertisers the option to set either a daily budget or a lifetime budget. Here’s how they differ from one another:
- Daily budget. If you want your ad set to run continuously throughout the day, this is the option you’ll want to go for. Using a daily budget means that Facebook will pace your spending per day. Keep in mind that the minimum daily budget for an ad set is $1.00 USD and must be at least 2X your CPC.
- Lifetime budget. If you’re looking to run your ad for a specified length of time, select lifetime budget. This means that Facebook will pace your spend over the time period you set for the ad to run.
To further specify your budgeting, turn to the advanced options. This section allows you to specify a few things:
Schedule
Choose whether or not your want your campaign to run immediately and continuously or if you want to customize the start and end dates. You can also set parameters so that your ads only run during specific hours and days of the week.
Optimization & Pricing
Choose whether or not you want to bid for your objective, clicks, or impressions. (This will alter how your ad is displayed and paid for.) By doing so, you’ll pay for your ad to be shown to people within your target audience that are more likely to complete your desired action, but Facebook will control what your maximum bid is.
If you don’t want Facebook to set optimal bids for you, you’ll want to opt for manual bidding. This option awards you full control over how much you’re willing to pay per action completed. However, Facebook will provide a suggested bid based on other advertisers’ behavior to give you a sense of what you should shoot for.
Delivery
Delivery type falls under two categories: standard and accelerated. Standard delivery will show your ads throughout the day, while accelerated delivery helps you reach an audience quickly for time-sensitive ads (Note: this option requires manual bid pricing).
Create your ad.
What do you want your ad to look like? It all depends on your original objective.
If you’re looking to increase the number of clicks to your website, Facebook’s Ad Manager will suggest the Click to Website ad options. Makes sense, right?
This ad option is broken down into two formats: Links and Carousels. Essentially, this means that you can either display a single image ad (Links) or a multi-image ad (Carousel) with three to five scrolling images at no additional cost.
A Links ad will be displayed like this:
A Carousel ad will be displayed like this:
Once you decide between the two, you’ll need to upload your creative assets. It’s important to note that for each type of ad, Facebook requires users to adhere to certain design criteria.
For single image ads, they ask that users adhere to the following considerations:
- Text: 90 characters
- Link Title: 25 characters
- Image ratio: 1.91:1
- Image size: 1200 pixels x 627 pixels. (Use a minimum image width of 600 pixels for ads appearing in News Feed.)
For multi-image ads — also known as Carousel Ads — Facebook provides the following design recommendations:
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Recommended image size: 600 x 600 pixels
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Image ratio: 1:1
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Text: 90 characters
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Headline: 40 characters
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Link description: 20 characters
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Your image may not include more than 20% text. See how much text is on your image.
Keep in mind that these are the ad options for the “send people to your website” objective.
If you selected “boost your posts,” you’d be presented with different ad options like the Page Post Engagement: Photo ad. This ad has a unique set of design recommendations. To explore all of the ad options and their design specifics, refer to this resource.
Once you select an ad type, the Ads Manager will prompt you to identify how you’d like to display your ad. The options they provide are as follows: Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, and Desktop Right Column.
Here’s how each ad would appear:
Desktop News Feed
Mobile News Feed
Desktop Right Column
Be aware if your ad isn’t associated with a Facebook page, you’ll only be able to run Desktop Right Column ads. To leverage all three display locations, you can learn how to create a Facebook Page here.
Report on the performance.
Once your ads are running, you’ll want to keep an eye on how they’re doing. To see their results, you’ll want to look in two places: the Facebook Ad Manager and your marketing software.
Facebook’s Ad Manager
Facebook’s Ad Manager is a sophisticated dashboard that provides users with an overview of all their campaigns.
Upfront, the dashboard highlights an estimate of how much you’re spending each day. The dashboard is organized by columns, which makes it easy to filter through your ads so you can create a custom view of your results. Key numbers like reach, frequency, and cost are readily available, making reporting on performance a no brainer.
According to Facebook, here are some of the key metrics to look for (and their definitions):
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Performance. Can be customized further to include metrics like results, reach, frequency and impressions
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Engagement. Can be customized further to include metrics like Page likes, Page engagement and post engagement
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Videos. Can be customized further to include metrics like video views and avg. % of video viewed
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Website. Can be customized further to include metrics like website actions (all), checkouts, payment details, purchases and adds to cart
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Apps. Can be further customized to include metrics like app installs, app engagement, credit spends, mobile app actions and cost per app engagement
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Events. Can be further customized to include metrics like event responses and cost per event response
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Clicks. Can be further customized to include metrics like clicks, unique clicks, CTR (click-through rate) and CPC (cost per click)
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Settings. Can be further customized to include metrics like start date, end date, ad set name, ad ID, delivery, bid and objective
How to Create Effective Facebook Events
Facebook events are the perfect way to get users’ attention and keep it. With Facebook’s calendar connection, most people have their Facebook events connected to their smartphones. This means you can keep your audience in the know without doing much leg work.
But it’s not just about creating great Facebook events. You have to know how to plan, coordinate and spread awareness of your brand through this tool. Don’t write off Facebook, but instead, use it in a way that will benefit you and your customers.
In this post, we’ll give you 13 ways on how your brand can get the most out of Facebook Events and actually get people to attend:
1. Name Your Event
First and foremost, your Facebook event should have an official name. If you’re having a happy hour, don’t just use the title “Happy Hour.” Come up with a fun and attention grabbing name like Frappy Hour at Starbucks.
Not only does naming your event help it stand out, but it also makes it easier for people to remember and talk about with their friends.
2. Write a Clear & Thorough Description
Your description is where you’ll give important details for your event such as pricing, special guests and the schedule. You can also include compelling copywriting to boost the attendance.
Another great way to use the description is to add special information about the location. For instance, if the event is in a certain part of a larger venue, you can list that in the description so people know where to go once they arrive.
3. Use Facebook Recognized Venues
When you’re creating Facebook Events, you can put an exact location for where it will take place. You have the option of entering an address, or you can enter the name of a venue on Facebook.
Start typing the name of the venue, and Facebook will autocomplete it with suggestions.
When people hover over the name of the location, the page will pop up. You can reach out to the venue and see if there’s an opportunity for them to promote the event as well since you’re highlighting their business.
4. Use an Eye-Catching Event Photo
Facebook Event photos should compel people to want to find out more. That means your photos should be eye-catching and relevant.
If you’re hosting a party to celebrate your company’s 10th anniversary, you’d probably want your photo to be festive and incorporate the 10 years somehow. The purpose of your event should be clear from the photo.
Another common issue brands run into with Facebook Events is trying to figure out what size photo to use. Since your event photo can be displayed in multiple places such as the News Feed and upcoming events section, you need an image that will look great when it’s resized.
Facebook recommends using the dimensions 1920 X 1080 pixel image or a 16:9 aspect ratio.
More likely than not, you’re going to share this event across other networks as well. That’s why it’s important to use a tool like Landscape. With this free tool you can easily resize, crop and adjust images to all major social media platforms. All you have to do is upload the image and choose which networks and styles you want for the same image.
5. Use Keywords For Tags
Optimize your Facebook Event by including relevant keywords in your tags section. Don’t limit yourself to just branded keywords. For instance, if you’re hosting a music concert, you could include the genre as a tag. Start typing relevant keywords and Facebook will give you suggestions.
Adding tags allows Facebook to recommend your event to users based on their interests, so fill out as many as possible.
6. Let People Post on The Event Wall
When you’re creating a public event, you have the option to only allow hosts to post on the event’s wall. In most cases, you should leave this unchecked.
The more active the event looks, the more excited people are going to be about it. It’s difficult to spark conversation when people aren’t allowed to post on the event page.
Making the wall public also allows you to answer questions. Since the posts are public, the event wall serves as a FAQ section for other people that have questions.
Be active. Whether it’s a question or general comment, reply to each post. Invite your co-hosts to answer questions as well to create a sense of community.
7. Pin a Post to Your Event Wall
Twitter isn’t the only social network that lets you pin content to your feed. You can pin posts to the top of your Facebook Events wall, so it gets priority over everything else.
You can use your pinned post to display updates for the event, start a countdown or list other important information.
In order to pin a Facebook post, just click on the arrow at the top of a post you published on the event wall and select “Pin Post.”
8. Set an End Time
This tip will help people plan ahead, and also keep you organized. A start date and time is required for Facebook Events, but setting an end time is optional. As a result, it’s easy for brands to overlook it.
Setting an end time is particularly important if your event will span multiple days. If you only set the date the event starts, Facebook will automatically set your event to end three hours after the starting time.
9. Run Facebook Ads
Getting people to find out about your event can be a struggle. Most brands start with their inner circle and hope those people share with their networks and so forth.
Instead of playing the waiting game, get proactive by running Facebook Ads to promote your event. You can boost your events just like you would with a post.
Boosting an event allows you to promote it to people who may be interested in attending, but aren’t aware of your brand. The extra reach can earn you more attendees and also build your Facebook following.
10. Partner up With Co-Hosts
Facebook allows you to add co-hosts to your event. Your co-hosts are able to edit the event and add it to their calendar so they can promote it too. Your co-hosts can be Facebook friends or other pages you admin.
Doing events with brands that have an established Facebook presence is a great way to grow your own following. Look for authorities and influencers and start planning an event that you can partner up on. Then add them as a co-host when it’s time to create the Facebook event.
11. Promote the Event Outside of Facebook
Like we said before, you’re going to want to spread the love across multiple social networks. So why limit your promotional efforts to Facebook? Spread the word about your event across all of your social media channels, your website and even offline. Your Facebook Events page will serve as the information hub where people can learn more and get specifics.
When you’re promoting your event on your other social media platforms, use a service like Bit.ly to track where your traffic is coming from.
Here are some ideas to promote your event on social networks besides Facebook:
- Schedule Tweets to be sent out leading up to the event. Link to your Facebook Events page.
- Add a link to your Facebook Events page in your Instagram profile, and post pictures to promote it.
- Create a Snapchat Story to promote the event.
- Make a Pinterest board for the event.
- Record a promo video and publish it on YouTube and other video sites.
To keep consistent branding, upload your event photo to Landscape and resize it to publish on Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks.
12. Schedule Events Ahead of Time
Not everyone can have success with spontaneous events like Beyonce. The earlier you can get your event on your Facebook Events page, the better. Not only will it give you more time to promote, but your followers will be able to look at what you have coming up and plan accordingly.
Large venues such as stadiums and amphitheaters often list events months in advance.
13. Create a Sense of Urgency
In order to get people extremely excited for your event, create a sense of urgency. People will be much quicker to attend or accept your invitation if they feel like they’ll miss out if they wait.
You can create a sense of urgency by limiting the amount of available tickets, setting a RSVP date or offering an early bird special.
