Welcome back to Traffic Jam, this is episode #5, I’m James Reynolds, your host, and I along with my special guest each week bring you the, latest,  cutting edge traffic techniques to drive a bigger audience to your website.

On today’s show, we have an exclusive interview with Jennifer Shean from FBadlabs.com. Jen is at the absolute forefront of Facebook marketing and works with some of the biggest personalities and companies in the planet including non other than the US President himself Barack Obama. As there have been so many developments coming out of Facebook recently, I have asked Jen to come on the show to tell us what these updates mean and how you can take advantage of them. It’s a real content packed interview with a ton of tips for getting the most out of your Facebook advertising campaign so get ready with a paper pad because you’re going to be taking some serious notes on the episode.

Of course you want to stick around until the end of the show for this week’s news in traffic where we have all of the latest news from the past week in traffic generation, plus there’s the one minute traffic tip, which is about a minute long and includes a tip on traffic. OK, the name kind of gives that away.

A quick shout out to Danielle Blaker, Nick Gonzales and all the Digital Bites team who are doing a great job bringing together digital media experts in the Middle East via their website digitalbites.me and their monthly events. I’m very happy to be a weekly contributor to their website which is really building a strong reputation as a source of knowledge and best practice on all Middle East Digital. If you’re in Dubai and can make it to their next event in Dubai Media City in April, make the effort to go along, I look forward to seeing you there because I too will be in attendance. For further information in their events, visit DigitalBites.me.

Because Jen’s got so many great tips to share on this episode, let’s drive straight in to the feature interview and we’re talking Facebook innovation.

Jennifer:  Hello, James.  Thanks for having me.

James:  It’s a real pleasure to have you on. Thanks for joining us. So, before we begin, tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, where you are, and what you do.

Jennifer:  Ok.  Sure!  My name is Jennifer Sheahan and I’m originally from Chicago but I moved to Melbourne, Australia about seventeen years ago and I haven’t looked back.  I’m really happy to not have to live through Chicago winters anymore.  I own and operate a Facebook Marketing Agency called FB Ads Lab and we focus primarily on helping medium-sized businesses bring their marketing over to Facebook.  So, we help them with their ads and their ad campaigns and pages and help them stay on the cutting-edge of what needs to happen in Facebook to their business.

James:  Fantastic!  And you’re now in Melbourne. Is that right?

Jennifer:  That’s correct…!  That’s correct…!

James:  I didn’t quite what it is about the water in Melbourne but we had Victoria Gibson who’s also a Facebook Specialist on the show a few weeks back and she, indeed, also is from Melbourne.  So, you guys are obviously doing something right over there with Facebook?

Jennifer:  We sure are.  Victoria and I are good friends. We get together regularly and share tactics and stuff.  We work together quite well.  She’s very smart.

James:  She is, indeed.  Yeah.  Well, you’re also a smart cookie when it comes to Facebook and that’s exactly why I got you on today’s podcast.  There’d been so many updates recently on Facebook and I thought it’d be great to get you on the show to kinda share your expert insight into most of these recent innovations coming out of Facebook and how businesses can best maximize them to generate targetted traffic.  So, if you’re happy to follow my lead, I scribbled down some notes here with a few updates that have happened, I guess, over the last twelve months or so, and I’d like to get you to tell us more about what each of these updates is all about, and, kinda your top insider tips on how to get the most out of each one.  So, we kinda break these down into what it is and your top insider secrets on getting the most out of it.  So, are you ready to roll?      

Jennifer:  Absolutely!  That sounds like a good plan.  Let’s try it!

James:  Let’s do it.  Ok.  Well,  first one, and I guess it’s a little way back now, is the introduction of Timeline.  Tell us about that.

Jennifer:  Absolutely!  So, it was probably a year ago now that Facebook introduced Timeline which is a new format for personal profiles and business pages.  And that had a profound impact on businesses because there were a number of things that, all of a sudden, became far more important.  And, for those businesses who implement those things right away, they were able to ride that wave.  One of those things is images and the importance of images on your Facebook page and your Facebook posts because what they changed  was that images were displayed much larger and they were, kinda, front and center, and I’ve seen these nice, big, colorful images in their news feed, people were firmer likely to engage with them.  Prior to Timeline, we were all, kinda, posting little comments and thoughts, more like Twitter.  And there were images here and there but it wasn’t quite as prominent as it became with Timeline.  So, that was one thing.  Another thing that was really important is they changed the cover photo.  They gave…it was…there’s a big Timeline image right at the top of our Facebook page as now that wasn’t there before.  And this is just prime real estate and it’s really a great opportunity for brands toI guess, to express who they are.  And it’s important that you change that…that…that…regurlarly, that you change that in every month or so, you might want to have, seasonal changes, or something like that, but that Timeline image is quite large and it’s really important aspect of your brand page.  That’s… there’s a couple of other things…do you have time for me to go into it?

James:  Well…, I think let’s drill into it…Yeah…Yeah…Fire away, Jen!  This is all good stuff…  

Jennifer:  Yeah…No worry…So Timeline also introduced a lot of…insights?  So, page owners were finally able to see how many fans they had and which friends were talking and from which countries were talking about their posts, which posts they were talking about so you could see, if you posted, you know, let’s say, over a week, you might post two photos and two videos and two question updates, where you could then go in and see, “did the photos generate more interaction on your page or was it a question update”?  And you can see how…what the impact was, which is just fantastic for page owners.  And then that helps you fine tune your messages, I guess, to make sure you have the biggest impact on your audience?

James:  Yup…!

Jennifer:  And then, we get to my favorite thing, which is the ability to highlight a post or pin a post to the top.  And a lot of brand page owners don’t realize that you can pin a post to the top of your Facebook page and it will stand every seven days..?  And, really great way to use this feature is to have a post that is, kind of an introduction to your company or your brand or, you might want to say, like it might be your opt-in or it might be your, you know, e-mail capture and you might have an event coming up and you have a little short video that encourages people to click an opt-in to get more information about the event.  That’s where…where pin that to the top so that when I do come and visit your brand page, that’s the first thing I see. And for some of our corporate clients, it’s nice to have like an introduction, “who are we?”.  “This is us,” and you might have an…like a tour of the inside of their office or you might get to meet the Marketing Director on the video or something like that.  It’s really cool.  And then, you can also highlight posts that have, maybe, especially if you have, like,  eye-catching images.  It’s nice to highlight them and that means that takes up the entire width of your Facebook page…

James:  Yup…

Jennifer:  …and it kinda makes your page, when somebody else is browsing it, looks lot more interesting (?) to have different shapes and sizes on your page.

James:  Got it!  That’s an excellent tip.  I haven’t actually ever thought of using it in that manner.  So, I’m definitely take that one away and implement that myself (?)  But let’s move on to the next one which feeds on from the discussion, I guess, about (uhm) good quality images and impactful stories in your post.  Tell us a little bit about page post ad.  This, again, is a very good innovation, I guess, for advertisers.

Jennifer:  Yes…Yes…Page posts are excellent and they’re very effective.  So…most people familiar wtih market place ad, which is the traditional, sort of, rectangular shaped ads that you find at the upper right hand side of Facebook.  And…about a year ago  again or so, that Facebook introduced this page post ad concept which means that the ad starts its life as a post on your page as an update.  So, you may wanna say, you know, (uhm) “we have a special on holidays to the Bahamas,” and you post a picture of the Bahamas and a link where people can click through to get the special offer—(uhm)  a holiday to the Bahamas.  And then, once you have that post on your page, you can go into your ads manager and create an ad (!) from that post.  And so, that kind of carries that post over to the right hand side…it gets a much, much bigger picture than a regular market place ad and also has that social proof aspect of showing how many likes, how many comments and how many shares that post has had.  So, if you use the page post ad format to highlight your most popular discussions…?…on your page…?,  obviously,  the discussions where you have an image because that’s gonna be the most…give you the most impact…those discussions…you highlight those with the page post ad and you get a lot attraction for a very low price.

James:  Got it!  Excellent…cool…!  Well, what are your top tips on page post ads in terms of the best format and content to use?  And, also, what about frequency?  Is there a good amount of times to be using page post ads?

Jennifer:  Well…, the first thing to consider is you…you wanna make sure you have an image in the post.  There are some people who, you know, are everyday on my Facebook page.  I see people doing page post ads for a post that don’t have any images and  you’re kind of wasting the effort there…

James:  Yeah…

Jennifer:  …’cause you get a whole lot more real estate if you do include an image of some kind.  So, number one, is you wanna make sure you have an image.  When you’re choosing your image, number two is a colorful, bright, engaging kind of image that is going to stand out on Facebook.  One that works very, very well is a screenshot of a video.  So, we have a screenshot of a video, it looks like a video itself…it has a play arrow and sometimes these get approved by Facebook.  We’ve had a couple get disapproved ‘cause it doesn’t have the play button, but I…I have about ten of them running at the moment and so it’s not against the terms of service.  And you can advertise those and it looks fantastic…

James:  Yeah…!

Jennifer:  …because it’s just…it obvious it’s a video when people want to click it and once they click it, they go to the post and there’s your link to watch the video.  So that’s (uhm)…that’s the second tip.  The third tip is to…choose your…your posts that already have a fair amount of engagement.  You can re-activate an old topic from your Facebook page, re-activate it today, (you can) go back to something back in December, if you wanted to,  if it got twenty-eight comments from people and it’s still relevant, you can make a page post ad about it.  And that re-activates it for all of your new fans and advertise it to them.

James:  Got it!  Well, that’s a classic…classic killer strategy.  Yeah!  Fantastic…cool…!  What about the actual make-up of the post itself?  Is there a certain length of (uhm) text or….

Jennifer:  That is a good question!  Yeah…

James:  …a specific action? (laughs a bit)

Jennifer:  Yeah…!  Good…!  Very…very, very good question.  Yes, there is and (it’s) I’m glad you brought that up.  So, what you wanna do is make sure your post is short.  You want, maybe, one maximum of two sentences.  Sometimes people make, (uhm), Facebook post in their page that are three or four paragraps long.  Really, you’re much better off making a blog post and linking to your blog post, if you have that much to say.

James:  Yup…

Jennifer:  So, just say it where two sentences and provide the link where they can get more information, if you need to.  So, one or two sentences, an image, and a link.  And if you want it to give your page post a boost, you can put the link in the first comment.  Instead of putting it in the post itself, you can put the link, you know, for us to read more or to go to your blog post or to watch your video.  If you put that in the comments…below…, you’ve automatically given a page post a boost because Facebook sees it as relevant because, “Oh, wow!  It already has a comment.  This must be really popular…”

James:  Ahhh….got it…

Jennifer:  “…we’ll show it to more people.”

James:  Got it!  So, the thing is, to get it set up, get your (uhm) link, add it to your comment, hopefully get a little bit of social interaction going first and then to use page post ad to then, boost it up and get, (ahh), more leverage from it. 

Jennifer:  Exactly…exactly…!  Now, when you’re creating your page post ad, you have control of whoever sees that ad.  Now, I recommend at the very beginning, when you’re just starting out, you only advertise to your existing fans (?).  (Uhm) You…you can advertise to anyone that you want to but you’re gonna save a lot of money and a lot of frustration and a lot of wasted clicks if you only advertise to your existing fans, to start of with.  It might seen counter-intuitive because you’re advertising to people who are already your fans, but the truth of the matter is that, at this point, only seven to ten per cent of people will see your posts, anyway, if you don’t promote them or create a page post ad.  So, what you’re doing by creating a page post ad is ensuring that more of your fans do see the post (?), they click on it, hopefully they’ll like it, and hopefully they comment on it or share it and, in that way, they’re the ones sharing your content with their friends instead of you, (uh),  co-actively advertising it to their friends.  So, when you’re first starting out, (that) the great way (in) to engage your fans, (to get) and to get more fans by them being the ones to share your contact…

James:  Got it…

Jennifer:  That make sense?

James:  Absolutely!  No…it makes perfect sense!  And, (uhm), yeah, with those sort of numbers…

Jennifer:  Ok.

James:  … of only seven to ten per cent of actual reach for a typical post, I think, (uhm), and it’s almost, perhaps, a necessity if you really wanna leverage your fan base to actually start using page post ads to reach them.  That’s good!

Jennifer:  Yeah…it is! I have one more thing to say about that before we move on to the next thing, though…

James:  (laughs softly)

Jennifer:  …it’s one thing that a lot of people, this is really velvet now, a lot of people are…who are not advertising only to their fans (that) they might be advertising to, say, everybody who likes internet marketing in the United States. 

James:  Yup!

Jennifer:  One of the problems that you’re having with people who choose a broad target market for their page post ads is a little bit of, (uhm), push back from people while saying, you know, — “stop spamming me…”, “stop writing on my page…”, “stop showing your ads…”, — all that sort of stuff and it’s causing some friction for…for advertisers (?).

James:  Yup!

Jennifer:  So, you really don’t wanna be upsetting people with your ads and you have no control over how often or where Facebook show your ads (?).  So, in the beginning, it’s great to just stick to your fans and boost your fan numbers that way and then be the ones to share your content.

James:  Got it!  Excellent tips.  Good!  Well, how do you(r) page post ads differ from promoted post because that, again, was another innovation that came out quite recently, and, I guess, we should properly…

Jennifer:  Yes, it is…

James:  …just distinguish the difference between the two and, perhaps, you will also talk about sponsored stories, as well.  But, let’s start with promoted posts. 

Jennifer:  Yup!  Yeah…!  Promoted posts…!  When you go into your Facebook page and you make a new post.  So,  you upload a photo and you comment, you know, you…you make your post.  Right in the bottom right hand corner is the option to promote this post.  So, thats gives you the option to pay Facebook — you know, five dollars or ten dollars or fifteen dollars or maybe more, if you have thousands of fans — to show that post to a certain number of your fans.  So, let’s say you have a thousand fans, it might cost you fifteen dollars to make sure that Facebook show your post to eight hundred of them.  That’s a promoted post.  And you really don’t have much control over it and what is does is that it shows up in our news feed just like your post would, anyway.  It just…as sponsored underneath it.  So, it doesn’t look like an ad (?) whereas page post ads are in the right hand column and they look like an ad.  (short pause) So, everybody knows that a page post ad is an ad but with a spons…with a promoted post, it’s right there in the news feed right in the middle and, (uhm), and, again, you should promote those to your fans only.  Facebook do give the option to promote to fans and friends of fans (?) but I highly recommend you avoid that…that choice, at this point…

James:  And I guess…

Jennifer:  …so Facebook can fine tune it a little bit more.   

James:  Yeah!  And I guess that’s where you would get resistance (uhm) if your actual post started showing up in (ahh) feeds of other people who, perhaps, who aren’t really interested in your content. I guess that’s when you get haters and — ahh— (slight laugh) and the spam “riddicks” coming out…

Jennifer:  Yeah…!

James:  …and (uh) throwing abuse at you…

Jennifer:  That’s right!  Right!  In my case, if you advertise to my friends, like, you know, (uh) my aunt Dianne is, yeah!, one of my friends in Facebook.  Like, my aunt Dianne is sixty years old.  She doesn’t do anything related to business, or marketing, or anything like that.  And if you’re advetising your stuff to my aunt…aunt Dianne, just because she’s my friend, it kinda doesn’t make sense (?).

James:  Yup!

Jennifer:  (Uhm) I guess, if people are working on the assumption that all of my friends are gonna be interested in, you know, PPC advertising or something just because I am… (short laugh) 

James:  (faint off-side laugh)  Of course…good!  Well, there are…are there any kind of, (uhm), good do’s and don’ts for promoted post?  Again, is there any type of post that make a more effective and useful promoted post?  Or is it kind of following the same sort of guidelines of (ahh)…that of…(ahh)…page post ads?

Jennifer:  Well, look…I think that it’s…it’s just one of those things you wanna use sparingly.  You wanna use…you don’t necessarily have to promote every post you write.  You don’t have to promote every…you make everything into a page post ad.  So, you might post maybe once or twice a week something on your page, like, gets a lot of interaction or a lot of, you know, debate or, you know, people are just sharing it like crazy because it’s super useful and really helpful and really timely.   When those are the things you wanna look out for, and those are the things you wanna make sure to see more of, all your other posts, they can just be there.  You don’t have to use promoted post or page post ads or anything to amplify those. I don’t.  They, you know, they’re not gonna have an impact on your bottomline.   I think you should choose the…choose to spend money on things that are gonna make you more money.  Those things would be, (uhm), you know, your best, most (uhm) targeted posts, if that makes sense.

James:  Yeah…it does indeed.  Great!  Ok.  Well, next item that I’ve got scribbled down in my notepad here is sponsored stories.  How does that differ from the two we’ve just talked about?

Jennifer:  You know, sponsored stories, I know this could get a little confusing, but sponsored stories are very, very simple ads on Facebook.  Again, they appear in the right hand side but, sometimes on mobiles, (uhm) they might appear right in the news feed, as well.  If you’d see, (uhm), like suggested apps to download or you’ll see that Jennifer Shean likes this page or suggested page or that it suggested app or something like that, (uhm) that I like to post or that I’ve checked in to a  restaurant or those kinds of things and is really just the business is paying to amplify the fact that people are engaging with our brand in someway or another.

James:  Yeah!

Jennifer:  Now, this is an excellen way to get new fans on your page (?) because it’s such a simple ad and for some reason,  people (uhm) take action on them quickly.  So, if you’re looking to build your audience and you want to get more fans, sponsored stories are an excellent option.  You can set a budget for five dollars a day and set up a very targeted sponsored storied campaign that you just make sure that, you know, you just advertised five dollars a day.  It’s not a huge investment, and you’ll see, you’ll get quite a few fans every single day from your five- dollar investment.       

James:  Ok.  Got it!  Right!  Next one I’m gonna fire at you is conversion tracking.  And I know when we caught up on ‘em another podcast of mine, I guess, eighteen months ago, you were using a number of kinda external tools to track conversions via Facebook.  Have you moved over to the new conversion tracking tool within Facebook and what are your thoughts on it?

Jennfier:  You know, this is (uhm) conversion tracking is fantastic and every single one of our clients (ahh) all the way back…dating back to 2010 has said, “Doesn’t Facebook have conversion tracking?  How come?  Why don’t they?” (Uhm) Facebook is such a young platform for them and it’s growing and changing constantly.  Now, in my time, (uhm) ever since I’ve been advertising on Facebook since before 2008, (uhm) this is now the third time I’ve seen some form of conversion tracking come through on Facebook.  So, I’m a little bit skeptical about it just because it kinda appears and then disappears for no apparent reason (?) (uhm) but I’m hoping that this time, it sticks around for good.  You know, because it’s so useful and it’s really isn’t important to understand that your efforts are paying off.  So, conversion tracking on Facebook means that you can (uhm) create a conversion pixel and place it on your confirmation page and you can add a dollar value to that.  So, if each sale is worth ten dollars to you, you can, (uhm), specify that in Facebook and (incoherent word) an ad campaign to track and to…to work towards that goal, I suppose, that conversion goal.  And it’s quite simple.  It’s cut…it’s quick good ‘cause it tracks conversions that happen within one day, (uhm) seven days or twenty-eight days after a person either clicks on the ad or if they view the ad.  So, that’s quite (uhm)…that’s quite unique if, you know, if I see your ad and twenty-eight days later, I buy from you, that will still register…as a conversion…

James:  Got it…

Jennifer:  …which is typical.  

James:  …Fantastic!  Well, that’s very good. Now, I guess there are advantages to having all of that information within the one interface inside Facebook more than having to use multiple tools…

Jennifer:  It is…It is good…I just (uhm) (used to) caution people because I’m  not sure how long it will stick around…(laughs)

James:  (soft laughter) Going on history, who knows? Maybe..

Jennifer: (softly speaking) We’ll see…    

James:  Yeah…maybe here tomorrow…

Jennifer:  That’s right!

James:  …just don’t know…

Jennifer:   Just seeing the caution and things change…Yeah…(soft laughter)

James:  (soft laughter)  Yeah…that’s a very good point and (uhm) it’s something, I know, you and I are very much aligned on it.  You should never be single-point sensitive and just reliance on one tool or one medium.  So, it’s a good lesson there, you know.  Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket and convert over to Facebook conversion tracking.  Still use your other tools, as well.  Good!  Ok!  Well, next one on my list we have…

Jennifer:  Yeah…!  That’s right…

James:  …we have this Facebook (uhm) offers and this is not something that I view.  So, I am very keen to find out a little bit more about how the application of Facebook offers could be applied to business and how effective it is.  So, (ahh) Jen, the floor is yours.  Tell us about Facebook offers.

Jennifer:  Yeah…Absolutely…So, Facebook offers are really cool feature for certain kind of businesses.  So, if you can provide a substantial discount to your Facebook fans, (uhm), it could…it could go crazy…absolutely crazy.  It’s almost like your own little mini groupon, (uhm), right there within Facebook.  So, once you’ve got some fans and you’ve got an established presence and…and a good, solid brand page, you know, your Timeline is all set up and (in your) well branded cause you’re gonna get quite a lot of traffic from (incoherent word), you gonna make sure it’s well branded and well established.  Then, (uhm), there’s a couple of things you wanna look out for (fer) with Facebook offers. It’s…you’re offering a discount so you wanna make that discount something fairly substantial, like, at least, twenty per cent off your regular price or double the value, you know, like, if you buy one tee shirt, you get one free or (uhm) somethign like that, you know, you buy art calendar, you get free shipping or you buy one, get one to give as a gift or…that kind of stuff.  So, you wanna make sure it’s fairly substantial and fairly unique (uhm) but you also wanna make sure that it’s simple so that’s really, really unique and easy and that people don’t have to, you know, buy one blue one and one pink one and then exchange an orange one and then send in ahead for five minutes, you know…assurance, you wouldn’t believe the things that come across my desk.  So, keep it simple.  Just spend a hundred dollars with us and we’ll send you, you know, a free coffee mug or something like that.  Now, again, images come back to…to haunt us.  So, you wanna make sure you use a clear and engaging image.  Pictures of people using the product are fantastic.  (Uhm) Anything with people in it works way (incoherent word) Facebook than just, like, if you’re selling coffee mugs, just a picture of a coffe mug is not nearly as powerful as a happy, smiling woman upholding your coffee mug.  (Uhm) She…that woman with the big smile and looking directly in the camera is going to generate so much more engagement than just a coffee mug.

James:  Got it! 

Jennifer:  (Uhm) And you wanna make sure that you can see it from far away, too.  So, if it’s a little thumbnail image, don’t shove too much stuff into your image.  We gonna say something?    

James:  Yeah!  I was  gonna ask about the use of, (uhm), text on the images because I would think that a lot of people would be inclined to put, you know, the offer on the image itself perhaps, you know, big sign with twenty per cent off.  Is that effective and do Facebook even allow it right now?

Jennifer:  (Uhm) You can…You can use an image with…with that…for offers.  You can.  But I still recommend you’re much better off with a nice picture of a person looking directly into the camera.

James:  Got it.  Ok…good!  And what sort of results have your clients been getting with Facebook (uhm) offers?  Have you got any sort of success stories that you can kinda attribute

Jennifer:  Yeah…!  Well…there’s…yeah…absolutely!  it’s fantastic for events!  So, (uhm), I’m sure you’re familiar with, you know, when you have events and you wanna fill the room and you have a certain number of spots available at this price for the VIP pricing and, you know that sort of thing, it’s fantastic to advertise an offer directly to your fans and promote it on Facebook. But what you need to do to make it really just explode, like a rocket, is to cross-promote every ware at the same time.  So, we recommend that you have, like, a launch date so you want to launch it at ten p.m. on this day and, at that same time, you wanna make sure that you are also sending an e-mail to your entire database telling them to go to your Facebook page and get this offer.  You can…you’ll get a direct link to the offer in Facebook and get them to go straight there and do that before…before it’s only up for too long because an offer without many people taking up the offer (?) doesn’t show very much social perth.

James:  Yeah.

Jennifer:  So, right there on the offer it says, you know, four people claimed this.  That’s not quite as powerful as four thousand people claimed this.

James:  Yeah.

Jennifer:  So, you wanna make sure that you’ve got a blog post and a video and an e-mail going out to your audience and that you pin that post to the top and then you promote…you get to choose your budget with your offer (?) so you can choose a nice big, hefty budget and promote the daylights out of it and get as many of your existing customers to go and claim the offers as quickly as possible.  (Uhm) That really helped in keeping your product a super boost.

 James:  Got it!  Cool!  I guess this is something that is probably for ocassional use but when it’s applied, sounds very, very effective.  Great!  The next one’s (uhm) I’m really excited…

 Jennifer:  Yeah!  And most of our clients use it for — I’m sorry…— (uhm) most of our clients use it for (uhm) about once of quarter (?) or several (?).  I’ve seen it to be a good…a good amount of time to have an offer.  If you have them to often, they kinda lose their “oomph” but ever so often for different kinds of markets, it’s once a quarter and it’s a good time.

 James:  Fantastic!  Good!  Well, the next one I’ve got on my list (uhm) I’m very excited to talk to you about because I think the marketing opportunites for this (ahh) look absolutely fantastic and that’s customer audiences and, more recently, which I think is very fresh, is look-alike audiences.  What’s ther…what’s this update all about?

 Jennifer:  Yes!  Yeah!  It’s really good!  (laughs)  So, (uhm), this is just fantastic and I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for this option.  So, custom audiences allow you to road in your e-mail database into Facebook.

Jennifer: Once you input that database, Facebook will automatically match that encrypted data against Facebook’s active users and they will build a custom audience in your ads account with everybody that matches  your list so that means you can advertise your product or service, your ad campaign, only goes to those people who match that email list.

James: Wow! I mean that’s powerful.

Jennifer:  It’s really good, and you know that these people have already had some sort of contact with you depending on where they are in your funnel; you know your sales funnel follow up process. So if you know that you met them at a conference, or you know that all these people came from a trade show, where these all leads from your podcast, you know you can tailor that audience, you can tailor that ad campaign to speak directly to those people, they might be your newsletter subscribers and you want to offer them a special deal or it’s just that the options are unlimited, it’s so exciting!

James: Wow! Yeah, I’m just thinking in my head now as you talk about this are the opportunities you know to kind of collaborate segmented email list with Facebook custom audiences and Google remarketing, I mean the precise messaging that you can create with those three tools is just is mind blowing, I think the opportunities are pretty fantastic. Good! Have you manage to roll this out with any costumers yet or even for your own activities?

Jennifer: Yes! So what we’ve done is we recommend that you load in your custom audience and then you fine tune any further so you can speak to just people who live in the United States, or just people so you load in your entire email database and you might have you know 300 thousand are in the US, and 200 thousand are in Canada and a 100 thousand are in the UK, and you can set them up to target only those that are in UK and speak only to them about their stuff, you can also targeted even further and go to only women in UK who are 40 years, 40-45 and married. Really narrowing it down to, you know those people who work in the health care industry in the UK, you know I mean it just goes down to a micro level and it’s really exciting.

James: Wow! Fantastic and I guess if you know who’s on your list you could actually get it down to a targeting of almost an individual person if you know them that well, which would be really freaky. Oh that’s cool stuff. What about a lookalike audience Jen, I mean that’s an off shoe as I understand it, tell us a little bit about that and what the opportunities are there.

Jennifer: Right, so lookalike audiences you need to have a custom audience first. So what you could do is you could load up your custom audience of your best costumers, let’s say you have a thousand people who have spent a whole lot of money with you, they’ve been you client for years, they are committed and involved and every time you have an event they come and every time you sell something they buy it, you’ve got that email list of those ideal costumers, you’ll load them into Facebook as a custom audience then you can go in to create a lookalike audience and what that will do Facebook will then find people who are similar to the people who are on your custom audience list. Does that make sense?

James: Got it. So it’s looking at their profile.

Jennifer: Exactly! So it’s looking at all of their profile data, all the things they like and don’t like, how active they are and all some stuff, in what country they’re in and you can narrow it right down and create a lookalike audience and advertise directly to them. Yehey!

James: Wow! Good! That is super awesome. And this is just been rolled out right? I mean this thing is got some sort of global release in the last, maybe, a week or so.  Have you got any results from this?  You must have tested it all yet?

 Jennifer:  It’s…we’ve got…we’ve got two test campaigns running right now and, so far, the results are phenomenal that the click-through rates are just through the roof which means that our cost-per-click is much lower and it means that our ads stay just how much more profitable the ROI is huge because we’re not spending nearly as much money and the audience is much more targeted.  Otherwise,  you mean you’re advertising to other all men living in a particular area who like particular thing that’s kind of a  guess of hoping that people will be similar but this is just…this is just…there is…there is no hoping or guessing and this is fantastic.

 James:  Love it.  Love it.  Cool.  Alright…I’ve got the last item on the list and again it’s very topical because a lot of talk about it at the moment and that is graph search.  Lift the lid on this one.  What’s all about it, Jen?

 Jennifer:  Ok.  So, graph search is fairly new and it’s been out there.  Not too many people are not really paying attention too much on it but what it is, is Facebook is kind of linked to Bing in search engine, right?  So, they have a fairly strong relationships since way back 2008 and so they’ve always been building this database of…they know everything about us, basically…Facebook do.  And so they’ve been trying to use this information to build this search engine kind of behind the scenes.  So, now what you can do with grass search is, like, say you go into Google, right?  And you type in “photographers in Melbourne, Australia”.  You type in photographers and you get all those people who arel really good at their SEO and rank for photographer in Melbourne, Australia, right?  They may…it doesn’t say that they’re good photographers but it means they’re really good in SEO so when you go into Facebook and you type in “photographer Melbourne, Australia”,  you’re going to receive result based on somewhat the pages your friends like and pages your friends have commented on or places your friends have checked in.  So, it’s wholesome for restaurants and any sort of, like, bars and nightclubs and local businesses and hardware stores and coffee shops and all kinds of stuff because by typing those words in, everything that is optimized in Facebook for “photographer Melbourne, Australia”, is going to appear in your search.  So, you can then select whether you gonna get images or you wanna get pages or you wanna get people nand Facebook will return those results to you.  So, it’s more important than ever that “photographers in Melbourne, Australia”, are well optimized on their Facebook page and in their profiles and in their business page so that when I type that in, I find you.

 James:  got it.  Well, that makes perfect sense.  I guess the next question we should probably cover how you optimize that page.  So, we start off with the research aspect.  How do you know what key phrases to be targeting so that it works in terms of search terms as Google would do.  How do you start of with the research and then what you do in terms of page optimized for their searched terms?

Jennifer:   Yeah.  Well, I think that their search terms are fairly similar.  This is the first time I ever said that because for years, I have been saying, you know, Facebook is not Google.  Facebook is not, you know, you don’t need the same keywords on Facebook in Facebook ads that you do in Google Adwords.  Google Adwords, you know, you’re searching for words that people are going to type in the search box for your ad to appear.  If you’re on Facebook, that’s not the same.  The keywords we use in Facebook ads are demographic keywords.  We’re looking for people who like Oprah Winfrey.  They’re not gonna type “Oprah Winfrey” into the search box on Facebook.  Do you know what I mean? 

 James:  Yup.

 Jennifer:  When it comes to optimizing your Facebook page, you do need those keywords.  You do need the same Google keywords because people…it’s not, like, a context search anymore.  If I’m looking for a good coffee shop in New York City, you know, near Times Square, I’m gonna put “good coffee Times Square”. 

 James:  Yup.

 Jennifer:  And I’ll see or I’ll say, “Stacey was just here.  And she found a great spot!”   Of course, I’m gonna go there because Stacey just commented on this thing and she put a picture of her and her husband in the coffee shop.  So, of course, I will go there because I gives me something to talk about Stacey and it’s recommended by my friend which is far more powerful than an SEO optimized Google search.

 James:  Yeah.  Absoutely.  Quite’s got that social element into it.  Well, do we know…

 Jennifer:  Yes.  That’s exactly  right.

 James:  Do we know yet where we should be placing those keyphrases within our page?  Could we quite limit it to the content placement aren’t we on Facebook?

 Jennifer:  Well, you are and you are not.  It depends that you usually know where to look.  The first thing you wanna do is name your page appropriately.  So, just a simple name, using your business name and/or location.  But you don’t wanna to on and on and on.  So, it shouldn’t be, you know, “Joe’s Coffee”, “the best coffee in New York City”, ïn New York Times Square” or something like that.  It could just say “Joe’s Coffee Times Square” or “Joe’s Coffee New York City” or something like that.  And then when you categorize your page, you wanna choose your business category and you can choose up to three sub-categories.  So, you might be a restaurant, you might be a cafe, you might be a coffee roaster or coffee grinder or, you know, you can find three sub-categories, as well, and these are important than ever.  In the past, we just picked one category and really didn’t care what it was.  But you wanna choose, make sure that you choose it as closely as possible. The next step is to research relevant keywords to your business so I’m recommending that you just get your main top SEO keywords and start with that. It’s…I mean…a couple of phrases might be good but you wanted to make sense becuase you’re putting these into your posts and you’re gonna be putting it in the about section on Facebook and there’s a section about your mission, your company description…all of that on your page and in your profile.  You can fill that with keywords.  But I mean, obviously, you don’t wanna do it, like, spamming list with just keywords and commas, like, you can say, “We are just coffee shop.  We believe in the best coffee shop in New York City.  We’re located by Times Square!”, you know what I mean?  So that people can read it and make sense.  And then, you wanna expand your page.  So, you can make sure you use pictures to your page and tag your business in the photo.  This is now a lot of people are doing.  When you upload a photo on a page, you can see an option to tag someone in the photo and I recommend you tag other than yourself personally or business page in every photo you load up.  So, people are searching for coffee in New York City and your page will come up and the image will come up in the image search.  And you can also use those keywords in your posts.  Again, saying, “We’ve just been voted the best coffee in New York City!”, right?  So, that kind of stuff.  So you wanna make sure you’re using those keywords in the posts, in the comment and in the about section, in the  mission section and company description section of your page.

 James:  Wow!  Got it!  Ok…this is great stuff, Jen.  And I’m sure we’ve given people plenty of actionable stuff.  Just around graph search alone is some fantastic tips there.  Great!   Well, we’ve got for…

 Jennifer:  It’s exciting.  Yeah.

 James:  It is so exciting and i think in terms of, you know, of development of Facebook as a platform on a whole new level of usage, you know, and what it can be used for coming up with graph search.  So, this is so fantastic stuff.  I can’t believe what’s happening in twelve months since we spoke.

 Jennifer:  (laughs) It sure has!  Goodness me!  Imagine what gonna happen within the next twelve months.  It’d be awesome!

 James:  Ohhh…

 Jennifer:  it’s fun to try to keep up with it all.  That’s for sure!

 James:  I’m sure, yeah. (It) has a big job for you to keep on top of it.  Oh  , I would ask you:  what have you been doing in the last twelve months ?  I know from personal conversations we’ve had, you’ve also been up to a lot.  Tell us about some of those developments in your own  business.

 Jennifer:  Oh, yeah!  Wow!  We’ve got such a fabulous time.  Well, our agency, FB Ads Lab, has grown dramatically over the past twelve months.  We have…now we have employees on lots of different continents and we help clients internationally all  over the place.   So, we work mainly with agencies and small to medium-sized businesses who already have successful ads running on Adwords and they understand the importance of SEO and they just don’t want to, you know, hire someone in-house.  They just want to get their Facebook stuff right from the beginning.  And so we work with them to help them undestatnd exactly how to optimize their page, how to build their page, what they need to say, how often they need to say it and then when and how to introduce ads into the mix and which style of the ads formats are best for them and their company and their audience.   So, we’ve been doing all of that and it’s just been grow going from straight to straight which is so cool.  One of the big things that we do this year is to work on Barack Obama’s 2012 re-eleciton campaign.  So, that was very, very exciting times and we were able to advertise in key demographic his clean states and just the inside operations there (is) just fascinating.  So, that was very…definitely a highlight of our year.

 James:  Wow!  That’s…that’s fantastic!  I’m a little bit disappointed you didn’t mention my name as a customer alongside Barack Obama but there you go.  (laughter)  Not quite such a big name…

 Jennifer:  You were number two.  I thought we only had time for one.  I’m sorry about that.  (laughs)

 James:  Oh…that’s fantastic!  And what about what’s next, Jen?  You’ve got exciting plans on the horizon where you going with your agency from hereon?

 Jennifer:  Absolutely!  Yeah, we do.  Because we’ve been working with Barack Obama’s team and because we have several large intrernational brands on board, we’ve just, by the nature of the way the things have happened, we’ve developed a very specialist team who are expert at dealing with bigger brands.  And bigger brands with very strict brand guidelines and a large international audience.  So, we have now developed that teama and they are just rocking.  So, we are get setting up another agency directly for them to work.  It is solely in focus on those bigger brands that they’re working with now.  That’s really exciting!  It’s been fun setting that up and you’re just developing that team is just been awesome.  It’s  so fun to work with really motivated talented people.  It’s great!

 James:  Yeah.  It’s a buzz, isn’t it?   Good.  Well, I know that’s pretty close to completion so I guess…

 Jennifer:  Very close…Yes…

 James:  …I’m gonna announce that and point people in the right direction perhaps not on this episode but in forthcoming ones so I’ll make sure people will find that  new agency site.  But for now, Jen, what’s the best place for people to come find you?

 Jennifer:  The best place is to come to fbadslab.com and our Facebook page is, like, fbadslab.com and pretty soon, we’re gonna have a podcast on iTunes.  That’ll be really good.  That will be filled with quick tips and strategies for business pages.  So, just really short episodes.  Just answer the most common questions we get.  We have a list of forty-eight questions so I think I have plenty of episodes  (laughs) to get started.  Yeah!  That’s…that’s where we are.  .

 James:   Awesome!  Jen, that has been absolutely fantastic probably the most content-packed episodes we’ve had today.  That’s an absolutely awesome strategies there.  Thanks so much for coming on the show and perhaps do it all again in twelve months time and see what other developments have taken place inside Facebook.

 Jennifer:  Thank you so much for having me,  James.  It’s been great chatting with you.

 James:  Thanks, Jen.  Bye!

 Jennifer:  Bye!

 

 This week’s news in traffic: Okay, so some activity out of Pinterest, they’ve given their site a new design and they’ve built it at a new platform which they say is going to help them roll out more updates in the future, and the new site design features a more stylish, more ergonomic look, nothing ground breaking in terms of updates; just a couple of enhancements that allow you to find Pins that you may be interested in a little bit easier. Anyway head on over to Pinterest.com, when you log in, you’ll be faced with a prompt to  convert over to the new design, and hit yes; it’s a nice improvement and well worth checking out.

News out of Facebook, they’ve rolled out their look a like audience which is a development of their custom audiences and gives advertisers an opportunity to reach potential customers who share the same similar differences with their current ones. Now although we’ve discussed this earlier on the show with Jen, I want to mention it again and because this really is an extremely strong feature that you should be getting a hold of right now. If you missed the section of the interview where Jen gave her insider tips on look a like audiences, hit rewind on the podcast, this is a big update.

In other news, watch this space for a new brand and traffic news portal that I’m going to be releasing real soon. If you’ve enjoyed the weekly SEO news I release over at SEOSherpa.com and the PPC news updates I put out at ClickJam.com, this news site is going to be a powered up version and a central hub where I release my core video content from now on; the domain has been chosen, the site designs are in process, and we’ll be sure to announce the release here on Traffic Jam in the coming weeks.

I’ve got some really nice listener comments this week and the first one is from Jason who says, “listening to this while having my breakfast. I’ll be tuning to the next episode when I finish my toast. Loving it!” Thanks Jason,enjoy that breakfast of yours!

I’ve got a comment from Alvin, who says, another great podcast James, loved the Filipino Jam this week. And that is in response to the tune that played out last week’s episode Bebot by the black eyed peas. Alvin, thanks for stopping by.  And Pointer drops in to say this is the first time I’ve listened in and absolutely loving it.

Thanks guys, appreciate the feedback, download’s really growing up to about 25% growth per episode and we’re still sitting stong in the top few percent on the new and noteworthy section, at least for the UAE anyway so thanks guys for your support, really do appreciate the comments there. Really what makes the show so rewarding for me so keep them coming!

Of course if you want to comment or post your ideas and feedback you can do so on iTunes, just search for Traffic Jam Podcast by James Reynolds and of course on the website, TrafficJamCast.com

The one minute traffic tip; I mentioned at the top of the show that I’m a regular contributor to DigitalBites.me and I also provide regular content for ehulool.com, the Bahrain based social blog, Ernesto Verdugo’s amazing websites.tv and from next week I’ll also be contributing to another regional based site interactiveme.com. Guest posting, where you supply content to blog owners who have similar content target market to your own is a very effective way to get yourself in front of a relevant audience.

There are many website owners who are looking for quality content to place in their blogs, in their forums and in their members area and if you can supply real good content, it’s a win win situation – the website owner gets good content and you get in front of a great audience who may find out about you for the very first time.

So how do you find such sites? One simple way to reach out to site owners from your market who you think might benefit from your content or, #2, pop on over to guestr.com which features a directory of sites which accept contributor content.

Okay, it’s a wrap on another episode of Traffic Jam, I’ll be back next week with another featured guest and a whole show packed full of traffic tips. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, leave us a review on iTunes, leave us a comment on TrafficJamCast.com, and I’ll be sure to mention you next week.

Playing out episode #5 is an old school classic hit pop track, it’s by Run DMC called it’s tricky and I happen to know that Run DMC is one of Jenn Sheahan’s favorite acts so I hope she enjoys this one – here we go, Run DMC, It’s Tricky.