We all are in a stage of obsession when it comes to social media. However, scrolling through our Facebook and Twitter news feeds are not always an accepted practice at work. Finally, there is a network that your boss is going to be begging you to check out...Yammer. 

Yammer combines the entertaining functions of networks like Facebook and Twitter and creates a network where your company can increase it's efficiency. Having a network only viewable by those who have an email address using your company's domain name has access to file sharing and easy communication. 

The Background Info

Yammer was introduced in September of 2008 at the TechCrunch50 event held in San Francisco, California. The aim of the event was to find the best Web 2.0 start-ups and launch them in front of industry leaders, capitalists and the press. The company based social network took the prize as the 2008 TechCrunch winner. In 2010, Yammer CEO David Sacks claimed that Yammer had doubled the revenue and that 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies were using Yammer.  By the end of the year, Yammer had over 3 million users. So why are we just now hearing big noise from this company? In June of 2012, Microsoft bought Yammer for $1.2 billion dollars, cash. Once Microsoft got ahold of the four year old company, things began to take off even more quickly. With the collaboration of Yammer and SharePoint Microsoft was able to form an all in one content and communication management system for its users. Microsoft also brought upon a new pricing system changing the Enterprise edition from $15 per user to $3 per user making it a little more affordable for us little guys. Microsoft also was able to offer new users even more benefit offering Yammer with Office 365 for $8 per month. 

Ok, So How Can I Use This? 

So maybe now I have your attention. Microsoft has done a great job of thinking of almost everything you need for business collaboration and communication. However, just signing up for the site is a little overwhelming. I am going go go over some of the functions of the site so maybe your navigation will be a little more at ease than my initial visit was. 

Conversation 

Inbox

Oh, I already have email...

Don't check them off the list just yet. Even the very organized Outlook can be frustrating sifting through those emails from clients, blog feeds and junk just to try to find the message from the guy down the hall containing the notes from the last meeting. The Yammer Inbox is a single place to read and track the conversations that you need to see. You are able to track announcements, conversations, @mentions and private messages in one area. 

Chat 

Finally one chat that everyone can use. No need in logging into gmail to chat with your boss and yahoo to chat with your assistant. Using the Yammer chat you can send a message quickly to anyone who is online, even if it is just about grabbing lunch. 

Profiles and Expertise 

This is one of my favorite parts of the site. You need a press release done, but can't quite remember who is in charge of what intern or who can write you one quickly. Search the profiles of your coworkers to find the appropriate person to address with certain tasks or questions. You can personalize your profile with your own expertises, contact details and files which are all easily found through search. 

Awards and Praise 

Did someone do a great job? Let everyone know. You can publicly praise an employee and a badge will apear on their profile. 

Groups 

Add your team to a group so you can easily communicate cutting back on emails and meetings. You can share files, discussions and deadlines all in one place. 

Announcements 

Never miss a meeting or event again. All the announcements for your company located right before your eyes cutting back on wasted space and tacky boards. 

Sharing 

Yammer Files 

Share documents, images, photos and presentations with your team and discuss changes. 

Yammer Notes 

Take the place of a meeting with a little Yammer Note session. Edit and publish a document with your coworkers without leaving your desk. 

Those are just some of the features that really appealed to me. 

For a complete list of features visit https://www.yammer.com/product/feature-list/ 

In my opinion, Yammer is worth every penny in keeping a medium to large company organized. Especially if you work with teams on presentations or projects.  Our small team is only in week one of using the platform. So far the hardest part about it, is just getting on and doing it. It is hard to get away from old habits like email and using our own file sharing system. I would love to hear about your Yammer experience and can address any questions you may have. Good luck Yammering! 

As much as I love social media, sometimes it just isn't fun. You work so hard planning out your Facebook posts for the week, and the one you liked the best gets zero attention. It is a frustrating field of work at times, but has its fun as well.

Instagram, the picture app, is a great way to shake up your social media strategy, and it's fun! I know you are wondering how an app full of teenage duck face selfies and Throwback Thursday's can benefit your business. The mobile only based network is a little difficult to explain unless you have used the app yourself. I ran into this problem while preparing a social media strategy for a client. When they asked me how Instagram worked, my normally chatty self was silent. How in the world was I going to explain how what seemed to be a simple picture app to my clients? The best way to explain to them was to show them.

Because I know there are many small business owners out there trying to catch up with our tech savvy world, I wanted to share this example for them all to see. This is also beneficial for other consultants like myself who are trying to explain to your average business owner why in the world you're asking them to download a picture app.

-bare with the images, they are a little fuzzy!

Getting Started

1. Take a photo or upload one from your camera roll that you wish to share.

- I chose a beach scene since my client owns property at the beach.

2. Choose the Hashtags

-These hastags will determine who sees your photos other than your followers. Similar to Twitter, you can search hashtags to find pictures other users have applied that hashtag to.

-I chose the following: beach, panamacity, panamacitybeach, floridabeaches, sb13, springbreak, sand, relaxingonthebeach, hotel, flamingomotel because they all related to my client.

Searching Hashtags

1. Why Search Hashtags

-Since I used those specific hashtags, I want to click on them to search to see what other people are posting in that area. If I need a post that relates to my client I post a comment on it, or like the photo.

example: I used hashtag #springbreak Well, if someone posts a picture of the beach I may comment "Spring Break at the beach is always fun! Have you booked a hotel yet? We have some great rates and specials at (MY CLIENTS HOTEL'S NAME) go check them out (ADD LINK)."

2. My Hashtags Results

My Results

In just 18 minuets of posting my picture I had 5 people who do not follow me, nor do I know like my photo. I also had one girl comment saying she was spending spring break there.

I posted this picture on my personal Instagram account, I can't even imagine if I would have been posting from my client's account.

See how Instagram and it's pretty pictures can help your business? With a little practice, you have another great, easy way to get your business's name out there.

From the moment I discovered Google and all of its amazingness, I began Googling myself.

 Research 

2. Now Use Them

Title Tags 

HTML Headings 

Content 

What is it?

 An iPhone application in which you create 6 second videos to share on Twitter. The videos are looped to repeat themselves.

How do you use it?

You hold down to record, allowing you to record separate clips. Then you can choose to post your Vine to Twitter. You’d be surprised how much content you can fit into 6 seconds.

Vine has burst onto the scene holding strong at the number 14 position (at this time) in the free applications chart of the app store, making it the second most downloaded social networking application behind YouTube. Unlike other applications who garnered respect from more established social networks on their own before they were purchased (a la Instagram), Vine started out under the guiding hand of Twitter. This partnership gave it the exposure for such a strong start. Vine is unapologetically only available on iPhones (sorry, we’re not sorry Android) and refuses to be accessible anywhere else, even a web page. Go ahead and try to going to their "website", if you could call it that, to see for yourself.

Vine is a great and easy way for businesses to show the inner workings of their company, show off products or post quick how to videos. After it’s been uploaded to Twitter, you can share the URL on your website and other social networks. Check out a Vine Haley made, and then try to make one for yourself.

Something for Nothing

I saw that Twitter Ads posted a Tweet saying that if you used a particular hashtag, I could get $100 in Twitter Ads. I didn’t really think it would work, but there wasn’t anything to lose, so I gave it a shot. Sure enough, a couple days later Twitter emailed me saying my $100 of ads was enclosed.

Not only was I excited to get followers on my professional personal Twitter account, but I also wanted to compare the effectiveness of Twitter ads to that of Facebook ads and share my experience. I’ve used Facebook ads in the past, but what I liked about Twitter ads is that you’re only charged for the ones that people click on or when people followed me.

Okay here’s how you get started.

First, you choose what location you want to target. At first I chose to target users only in my state, but I saw I wasn’t getting any clicks or follows. Then, I decided to broaden my location to the entire country and I got much better results.

Next, you choose to let Twitter pick which Tweets to promote or to choose the Tweets yourself. I definitely recommend choosing them yourself. You have some Tweets that are more relevant than others, so of course you want to promote the more relevant ones. To track your clicks you have to add a link to your website or other social network. But, there’s a trick to get more out of the money you spend on Twitter ads. If you promote a Tweet that doesn’t have any links, it can’t be clicked on and you can’t be charged to promote it. Also, you choose how much you want to spend on promoted Tweets a day. I chose to spend $7.50 a day, which amounted to $1.50 a click, but my $100 only lasted me a week so if you’d like to span your campaign longer, choose less. But, if you want to do a really concentrated campaign choose to spend a little more per day.

Promoted accounts are the next thing you control. Again, you choose how much you want to spend on this a day. I picked to spend $7.50 a day on this, which amounts to $2.50 a follow. Now, my numbers are nowhere near perfect, I just chose them randomly, so you can base your numbers off mine and my results.

Finally, I entered my credit card information. Even though I had $100 in credits, I still had to put in a credit card to cover for the costs if I ran over this amount. 

Here's my end results.

Let me know about your experience with Twitter ads. 

Can Social Media Really Land You a Job? 

The day I stepped foot into my first college course the preaching began on social media. Starting out with a Pre-Med focus, social media was the devil. After realizing all the blood and guts just wasn't my thing, I decided to venture over to the side of the college where social media was far more acceptable...if done correctly. 

So, most of us PR, advertising and communications type majors learn how to tweek our social media to land us jobs and make connections. But are the doctors, lawyers, business professionals, managers and other professionals missing out? 

Professional networking has become popular in recent years. Connecting with others in your industry, showing off your skills and presenting your work can land you a dream job. The largest professional networking site in the US is LinkedIn. There are also others out there that are growing such as, www.zoominfo.com and www.ryze.com 

How did I become the Director of Development and Communications at Socially Inclined? LinkedIn

Yep, thats right. I landed my DREAM job because Socially Inclined's founder discovered me on LinkedIn. As a communications major, I always knew LinkedIn would be a great source to find a job. However, I never imagined a job would find me. LinkedIn isn't just for the creative majors, if you are a professional and you are not using LinkedIn, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities. 

So what did I do different to make my profile stand out? Honestly, not very much. Here is an overview of how to get started on LinkedIn and tips for using social media to land your dream job. 

Creating your Profile 

When creating your profile you want to be very thoughtful to how to approach each section. 

Profile Picture

LinkedIn allows you to use a picture on your profile. Make sure that the profile promotes you as a professional. The best image for this, is a simple headshot of you in business attire. Having a professional photo doesn't mean you have to get a professional to take it. 

My Profile Picture: For my profile picture, I woke up early one Saturday morning, fixed my hair and makeup and put on a nice blue dress. I then bribed my younger sister to get up, I stood against a white background in our house and waaa laa my LinkedIn profile picture was created. 

Tips: 

• Make sure you look professional 
• Don't take a "selfie" (photo of your self where you are awkwardly holding the camera towards yourself)
• Make sure it doesn't look like it was taken from a Mobile phone 
• Your picture should be only of you (and that doesn't mean crop out your friend) 

**Students: If your LinkedIn photo is also your Facebook profile picture or a picture you have uploaded to Instagram, it more than likely doesn't belong on LinkedIn. Be professional. 

Heading 

LinkedIn automatically makes your Headline the most recent position you have listed on your profile. However, the best way to utilize this feature is by creating your own tagline. Position titles all start to sound the same, so create a tagline that represents what you do or what you plan to do, not your title. 

My Heading: My heading right now reads "Social Media Strategist: Learn, Plan, Measure and Manage your Social Media Strategy with Socially Inclined" My heading now not only "advertises me" but also the company. 

Tips: 

• Be creative 
• Don't just list your job title, unless it is a cool one and not generic 
• Don't include "seeking work or unemployed" even though you don't have a job, add something creative 

**Students: Don't just list "Student at X University" say something like "Communications Student at X University focusing on nonprofits and brand promotion" it shows you have a interest or "specialty" and those types employers can seek you out. 

Summary 

So let's say you had the attention of the CEO of your dream company for one minuet, what would you say? This is exactly what your summary statement is for. When someone clicks on your profile the first three things they see is your photo, headline and summary. After they read your summary you want them to immediately look for your name. 

My Summary: "As social media marketing takes over as the new word of mouth, I am dedicated to helping small and medium businesses learn how to incorporiate social media into their marketing plan. With the correct plan, social media is a business's way to build and maintain relationships with clients."

Tips: 

• Write your summary in first person 
• Be creative, show your personality 

Experience, Education, Skills and Activities  

These sections lay out like a traditional resume. You want to be very selective when deciding what to put in these sections. For a professional, you only want to include positions and skills that farther endorse you for the positions you are seeking. However, for a student who may not yet have experience, it does show you are responsible by displaying your positions held while in college. As far as skills and activities go, present those in a way to add insight to your profile, not distract from it. 

My Experience, Education and Skills: When I was a student, I had each position I had listed to show that I maintained a job while completing my undergraduate career. After graduation and getting my first "real" job, I removed all of that information because it became irrelevant after I started gaining professional experience. I attended three colleges while completing my undergraduate. One was a community college which I obtained 30 hours through while I was in high school. The other two were universities that I spent two years each at. This is one part of my profile that I am not 100% confident with. I initially thought to only include the school I obtained a degree from, but others told me I may miss out on connections that way. Also, I received scholarships from each school I did not earn a degree at, so not listing them means not listing those awards. If you have thoughts on this, I would love to discuss them. 

Tips: 

• Add information that promotes you as a professional 
• Information should improve your profile, not distract from

Connecting 

LinkedIn is all about the connections you make. However, you want to use good judgement when building your network. Connect only with people you know. When sending an invitation to connect, always send a personal message, not the generic one. On LinkedIn, you are only allowed 3,000 invitations during your lifetime membership, so you want to really think about those invites. You will also have people requesting to connect with you. Be sure to respond to these connections promptly to show you are actively using the site. Although the goal is to build a large network, make sure the invitations you are approving are people who will help you grow professionally. Facebook is the place for friends, LinkedIn is the place for professional acquaintances. Another great way to connect is by joining groups. Affiliating with different associations and professional groups can not only introduce you to others in your field, but also keep you up to date on news and issues in your industry. 

Tips: 

• Invite people you know 
• Send personalized invitations 
• Connect only with people you will mutually benefit from 
• Respond to invitations quickly 
• Send a personalized message to new connections
• Join professional groups to learn more about your industry 

Maintaing Your Profile 

Keeping your profile up to date is very important. When you update your profile, each of your connections will get a notification saying that you did so. Making sure you are updating things as they happen allows you to pace yourself on the site. You don't want to wait until you have a lot of updates and blow up your connections feed once a month. You want to optimize your appearance to your connections with maximim exposure. 

Tips: 

• Update your profile often
• Don't blow up newsfeed while waiting and doing everything at once 
• Maximize your exposure 

Finally a way everyone, no matter the industry, can get their social media fix while promoting themselves professionally. I advise everyone, even if you are perfectly content with the position you are in, to join a professional network to stay up to date on whats going on, network with others and have a professional profile ready when you are ready to make your next leap. 

Usually when Facebook decides to make a change, they just make the change and the rest of us just have to deal with the consequences. Usually when Facebook decides to make a change, they change something completely unnecessary and make everyone mad for a few weeks. But when Facebook announced they were having a press conference to talk about a new feature in an Apple-esque fashion, I knew it had to be about something big.

Facebook started out saying that it wanted to get back to its roots, which is something I am definitely in favor of. The social network started out as a way to connect with people and find people with similar interests to connect with. The new feature, Graph Search, is geared toward doing just that.

Graph Search is no ordinary search engine. Instead of showing you links to the answer you’re looking for, Graph Search will show you THE answer itself. And before all of you concerned about privacy get worried, you can only search information that has already been shared with you. So you can control what information can be seen.

Still confused, don’t worry I was too at this point. Next, I’ll show you some examples of what you can search for and the implications of this feature for personal usage and business usage.

The first version of Graph Search allows you to explore for main areas: people, photos, places and interests.

People

Say for example, you’re travelling to San Francisco and you want to see all of your friends who live in the area all in one place. Right now, as they mentioned in the press conference, this is very hard to do. Now, the graph search allows you to first choose My Friends, and then add other filters to get all of your friends who live in one area to show up. Facebook may turn into a pseudo-dating site, allowing singles to search for people who live in their area, have similar likes, and mutual friends.

Photos

With Graph Search you will also be able to search within your friends pictures. You can search for pictures taken before 1990, then further specify your search by getting the pictures with the most likes to show up first. No more scrolling through multiple friends' profiles to look for a specific photo; it's all in one place. You can also save  previous searches to look at them later.

Places

This is where things get really interesting for businesses. If you’re looking for a great restaurant to go to tonight, you can search where your friends have visited. And because some of your Facebook friends don’t really matter to you, the results can be personalized by making the results from people you’re closer to show up first. This is no generic search. If you and someone else search for the same thing, you won’t have the same results.

Interests

There are also business implications in this section. Businesses can find people who are interested in certain topics to use when researching their target demographic. Individuals can use this feature to find music that their friends are interested in or find out which movie they should watch based on what their friends like.

Business Implications

While monetizing interests are on the back burner right now, businesses can keep up with their competition by seeing which companies their friends like. Say, for instance, you’re a Jewelry Store, here’s what this feature would look like for you.

You can sign up to be on the wait list for Beta mode here: www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch . We have our fingers crossed we’ll get on the list and we’ll pass on more info to you. 

images via: Facebook http://newsroom.fb.com/News/562/Introducing-Graph-Search-

http://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/introducing-graph-search-help-people-discover-your-business

Do reply to comments

In today’s fast-paced world, we expect results instantly. Not a week from now, not two days from now, not really even 12 hours from now. Social media, in some cases, is even reducing the need for customer service calls. Your customers don’t have to jump through hoops to talk to someone, they can just write on the company’s Facebook page. It’s imperative that you respond to your customers’ questions on Facebook. If they write on your wall, they want to be heard so don’t ignore them.

Do add images and videos to your posts

The engagement rate goes way up when pictures or videos are added to posts because let’s face it: people would rather look at pretty things than read. These stats from ragan give some details on how effective images and videos are:

• People share videos 12 times more than links and text posts combined.
• People "like" photos two times more than text updates.
• Photos and videos drive the most engagement on Facebook's top 10 brand pages.

Do utilize Facebook’s free features

Facebook has a lot of features that businesses can benefit from at no cost to them. Events, Facebook Applications like photo editing tools, and Facebook Places are all really useful tools. Even if your business doesn’t have a brick and mortar location, you can still create a Facebook event for a virtual event like a launch to let your customers about it. Facebook places is a great way for businesses to advertise to their customers’ friends and add content to your business page. Also, it’s a lot more streamlined than having to use FourSquare to check-in.

Do be consistent with your posts

Especially when using multiple social networks, it’s important to maintain a consistent tone across platforms. Within Facebook, develop a pattern of how you create your content and stick to it. For example, when I create posts for clients I tend to alternate between lighter facts about the company’s industry and “hard sell” posts to promote the business. This way, people have a clear impression of your business’s Facebook page. Also, be consistent with how often you post on Facebook. Ideally, it’s best to post once a day. But if posting that frequently isn’t an option consistently post, for example, three times a week. You shouldn’t be posting a ton of stuff one week, then fall off the face of the earth the next week.

Don’t promote your business using your personal Facebook page

Not only does this bug your personal friends, it’s also highly unprofessional. In social networking, it’s crucial to make a clear distinction between your personal usage and your professional usage and never mix the two. Also, your business should be using a Business page, not a regular Facebook account.

Don’t post too frequently

When you’re first starting social media, you may think: the more posts the better, right? Well, you would be wrong. There comes a point where your posts stop being effective and start becoming annoying to your customers and they may decide to unlike your page. The trick is to find a have a strong presence on Facebook without posting so many times that your fans are annoyed.

Don’t make your posts too long

You want to cram as much information as possible into your posts, but your followers are much more likely to read shorter posts. Again, this is because people are lazy. Online, people are far more likely to skim material than actually read it, so to get the most of their attention: keep your posts short. Facebook posts should be like skirts, long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep it interesting.

That awkward moment when one of your friends calls to ask why you are posting on everyones wall about some awesome diet pill you've found...

SPAM

In my book it is one of the worst four letter words out there. It is bad enough when your personal reputation is put on the line because of it, but what if your professional or business account is hacked? 

My inspiration for writing this post came from the spam I received today. Since I see spam daily, it normally doesn't affect me. But today, it made me think. 

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop where one of the speakers was a university professor speaking about social media. He was a great speaker and I wanted to connect with him later so I followed him on twitter. Well, today I see I have a direct message from him. Excited, I opened it to see what he had to say. However all that was there was a link. I knew this was more than likely spam, but I clicked anyway. To my surprise a very nasty website popped up on my iPhone. I was instantly embarrassed for this poor guy. A professional, a speaker and a business owner hacked and attached to an awful message. Do I judge him? No. But will others, we shall see. 

Spam happens. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, there is a possibility it could happen to you. So when I saw the message today, my PR brain kicked in. What should he do now? It is not your or your business's fault if you are hacked and spammed, but it is your responsibility to take care of things. Here are a list of things to do: 

1. Address the Situation

Of course the first step is to let your friends and followers know that you did not post such things. This is simple. Address the situation and apologize by changing your Facebook status and sending out a Tweet.

2. Find who received the messages

Often you may be able to see who the message was sent to by looking in your sent messages. Write down a list of these people and send them a message apologizing. Even one generic message will work in this situation. They will be thankful that you cared enough to write one. 

3. Delete what you See

Of course you don't want to spend hours flipping through your friends to see if anything was posted on their wall, but if you happen to come across anything, delete it. 

Simple enough? As I said before, spam happens. 90 percent of the time no one blames the person who was spammed, but you still want to address the situation. 

Spam may not be 100 percent preventable, but there are a few ways you can help protect yourself. 

• Change your password monthly 
• Clean out your browsers cache often 
• Check out the apps that associate with your Twitter or Facebook and check their settings
• Be cautious of "fake followers" on Twitter...block them!

So as spam may be embarrassing, it is not the end of the world. If you just take a little time, the crisis will be adverted as fast as it started. 

A few short months ago I Tweeted this..

Being someone who considers herself to be rather "socially inclined", I was slightly embarrassed when I came across a tweet with a link the video on new.myspace.com

So with the help of the very one who brought sexy back, Justin Timberlake, it turns out Myspace plans to break back into the social media world.

It seems MySpace has really put some time into the rebranding of the site. A few things I noticed.

1. They have changed MySpace to be spelled Myspace.

• So far I haven't been able to find any information on why exactly they did this. 

2. Change of color scheme and logo. 

• Before MySpace's main color was blue. Just like Facebook and Twitter later were. Now, with their rebranding they have changed their logo to black. I imagine this is to attract their target audience more so. 
• The logo has also changed form 

this 

to this 

3. The target audience of Myspace has changed.

• Back in my days when Myspace was cool, it seemed that the target audience was just the general public. I was just a normal middle school kid striving to be everyones number 1 friend. Remember those crazy rankings? 
• Now, Myspace is trying to attract artists and musicians. Since Facebook doesn't have the same music uploading capabilities as Myspace, many upcoming artists don't have a place to post their songs for fans. Sure, there is YouTube. But that requires either filming out an entire video or establishing some lame clipart for viewers to see while listening to the song. 

When you think about it, it is a great idea. As Timberlake stated, 

"There's a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff, and just connect," Timberlake said at a news conference. "Myspace has the potential to be that place. Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there's a natural social component to entertainment. I'm excited to help revitalize Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community."

But will Myspace be able to get away from those 

Every page on Facebook has several ads on each page and there’s a reason so many other businesses have chosen to advertise on Facebook: it is cheap and effective. Facebook allows you to send ads to your exact target market. It is almost scary how specific you can be on who your audience is. When creating your ad you select who you want to see your ad by using Facebook’s vast databank on users’ likes. If you were a book store opening in town you target people who enjoyed reading, books, and magazines for obvious solutions, but you can also go deeper by selecting people who like other book stores or maybe coffee which is sometimes associated readers.

In traditional advertising, the message interrupts viewers while they are listening to the radio and television. No one looks forward to the commercials, with the exception of the Super Bowl. People do everything in their power to avoid commercials. They’ll change the channel, go get a sandwich, listen to a different station, or fast-forward through them. Then there goes all of your hard work to make convincing commercial and hard earned money to pay for it. Traditional advertising mediums boast large impressions, but these aren’t truly the amount of people who will see the ads. Those millions of impressions television stations boast are merely the amount of people watching the program, not the ad. Online advertising allows businesses to measure the real amount of people viewing their ads and pay a lot less for advertising.                                                                                                                                                 

1. Choose the goal of your ads.                                                                                                                                                 You can chose between gaining likes, promoting posts, or some advanced option. Most likely, if you’re just starting out you’ll want to gain fans so that you can interact with more potential customers. Once you have a large following, you can work on promoting posts or look into the advanced options.

2. Choose your target audience.                                                                                                                                             Facebook allows you to select who to target based on location, age, and interests. The location and age are pretty simple and will model who your business already targets. The interests area is where you can really customize who will see your ads. Facebook will also show you how many people will see your ad the more you narrow your target audience. There may be 200,000,000 on Facebook, but you only want to target women so you then cut down to 125,000,000. So you also want to monitor how large of an audience you are showing an ad to. If you are a new business trying to promote awareness, you would want a bigger audience and a more established business would want a smaller audience that fits their customer base very closely.For example, if you were opening a new book store you would want to choose obvious interests like books, reading, and the book stores already in town, but also less obvious interests like coffee, magazines, and kids because people who like these things would be interested in going to your book store.

 3. Select more targeting options.                                                                                                                                             Also in this area, you can choose whether you want to target people who are already connected to your page and whether you want to target people who are friends with those who already like your page. If you want to remind those who like your page about your business, you should to choose those who like your page, but otherwise you should choose to target those not connected to your page. Businesses that have a pretty large following can choose to target friends of those connected. If someone sees that their friend already likes your page, it will add credibility. But if you don’t have a big following yet, this option will not target enough people.                  

4. Pick your budget.                                                                                                                                                             Once you’ve nailed down your target audience, it’s time to decide how much you want to spend on your ads. If you chose the goal of your ads was to receive clicks on the ad you are given the option to choose an amount of money to spend on the campaign per day or for the lifetime OR to pay a price per click. Facebook recommends spending between $0.81 and $1.60 but you can choose as low as you want. If your goal was to get people to like your site you only have the option to choose between paying a price per day or a price for the lifetime. For the first ad, you may want to spend a little less than normal so that the next time around you can learn from your mistakes and refine your technique.

5. Tweak your ads.                                                                                                                                                                  Just because your ad is up, doesn’t mean you’re done. In a constantly changing medium like online advertising, businesses have to update how their ads look regularly, even if it is just a small tweak like changing the background color. People will become used to your ads quickly if they do not change and they will not have an impact. Use the analytics tools to see which version gets the biggest results.

 You’re not going to get Facebook ads right the first time, but once you figure out the right audience to target and what pictures and copy they respond to most, you’re bound to gain a lot of likes.