Facebook putting user phone numbers to use

To personalise your social media page, Facebook have allowed you to add personal details to your profile page, such as your telephone number. These numbers are now being offered to advertisers on Facebook through their phone number retargeting initiative. 

The new advertising feature allows business, both local and global, to target someone linked to their business through a phone number via their Facebook account. To put it simply, say you have signed up for a credit card, entering all your personal details including your phone number, but then decided 6 months later you didn't want it and had the credit card cancelled. The credit card company would look into their database of everyone who signed up with them in the past, but are no longer with them any more, cross reference the phone numbers in their records with those linked to various Facebook accounts and begin placing ads on the news feeds of those individuals, advertising new credit cards or services they provide.

These advertisers can also choose to have the ad tracked, allowing them to see how successful their ads have been in getting users to convert. However, it will come as a relief of many to know that the advertisers don't actually get to see your number, they just use them for the purposes of retargeting. When a business, such as a ecommerce store, undertakes this service, the phone numbers used will be replaced with random characters by the system, making the user whose phone number it is anonymous.

If you are someone who doesn't like the idea of having a business target you with advertisements through your phone details, you should remove any records of your phone number that you have on your profile or any other pages on Facebook.

Facebook have made a rather big play towards providing a number of advertising options for businesses in recent months in order to generate some much needed revenue to improve a share price. While the share price is up to 24.32 from 21.21 at the beginning of the month, it's some way off the lofty 38.23 which the share had back in May.

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Is Facebook advertising just one big scam?

Facebook's recent movement towards paid promotion seemed like a great tool for an ecommerce store to help increase their public brand image, allowing them to engage with more users through their Facebook page. However, while on paper is looks like a good idea, in reality is it causing more harm than good?

Due to these paid advertisement options, Facebook have limited the true reach that your posts will achieve. When you send out a status update regarding your business such as the latest products you have, offers you are running or any questions you are putting to your customers, you would expect that everyone who is following you would be able to see the post. The truth is that only around 40% of your total followers will be able to see it. 

So, why would they do this?

 Well the answer is simple really. The less people your posts reach, the less engagement you are going to get and the more it will make you think that your Facebook posts aren't working and something needs to change. The theory is that this would then result in you using some of Facebook's paid promotion channels to increase the number of followers and engagement your business page is achieving. 

It also means that a user's news feed has a set percentage of sponsored posts visible, rather than the news feed being taken up by nearly all organic posts, strengthening Facebook's stance that promoted posts genuinely do work. 

What's the solution?

In order for you to get the maximum possible reach on your posts, meaning that everyone who follows you will be able to see what you post, you need to get your followers to click on "Like" button and then select "Add to Interests List." This will ensure that all of your followers are able to see everything that you post in the future. 

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Facebook Vs. Google Display Network

For most (wise) businesses, there advertising expenditure must be perfectly selected to make the most out of their marketing budget.  Many companies may decide to target customers via social media giant Facebook, or the widely used Google Display Network, both of which target a huge following of consumers.  But who to choose?

A new infographic from Wordstream discusses the differences between the two networks, to highlight which is of the most value to businesses. 

Promote Posts to Increase Your Facebook Following

You may have just decided to have a great sale or promotion on your store that a number of people will love. You post the sale on your Facebook page for all your followers to see. However, if you don't have many Facebook followers, how do you let everyone out there know about this awesome deal they are missing out on?

Using Facebook's 'Promote' service allows you to send out these post notifications to people who are not following your business. These might be people who are friends of people who like your Facebook page, or people who have similar key factors such as geographical location and interests. While all these sounds like a fantastic way to advertise your business and increase your following in the process, what you need to bear in mind is that this service is not free. As the old saying goes: "You have to spend money to make money."

How to 'Promote' a Facebook Post

Once you have created the Facebook post you wish to send out, select the 'Promote' button next to the 'Post' button. Select how much you would like to spend promoting the post. The more you spend, the more people will see your post. You will be able to get an idea of how many extra people your post will reach by looking at the 'Set your budget' section underneath where you have entered your budget total. For some businesses, it may be better to have a small initial budget just so you can just how successful the service has been. If you generate a large number of followers from promoting the post, increase your budget the next time you do it.

However, this service is only available to businesses that have between 400 and 10,000 followers. If you have a business that is below 400 followers, check out some other tips from eSellution on how to increase your followers: "How to Build Up Fans for Your Facebook Store."

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Facebook Advertising to Market Your Business

Facebook have recently decided to launch their own service, 'Facebook Exchange' that allows businesses to advertise on Facebook. Despite the obvious popularity of Facebook some people may still ask, how beneficial is Facebook advertising actually going to be for my buisness? The answer is very beneficial!

With reportedly over 500 million daily users on the social networking site, the opportunity to promote your ecommerce business is substantial. However, if you decide that your business should embark on the Facebook Exchange, who will actually see your advertisement?

How Facebook Exchange Works

When a Facebook user visits an external third party site, the cookies for that site are marked by Facebook Exchange. Then, when the user next visits Facebook, advertisements will appear along the side of the various Facebook page advertising products and services similar to the page external page you previously viewed. 

How Do You Get Your Business to be on Facebook Exchange?

If a business is looking to have their advert appear on Facebook, they will hire Demand Side Platform (DSP) company. A DSP is a company that communicates with Facebook allowing a business to customise their performance indicators such as target audience and cost per click. They also allow a business to bid on specific ads that relate to your business. However, competition for these ad slots are incredibly high with a number of different companies all attempting to get them. The company who has bid the highest amount for the advert slot that relates to the users third party website will get their advert placed on Facebook. 

The real problem with advertising on Facebook is that users will always have the option to opt-out of having a specific Facebook Exchange adverts appear on their Facebook page. This means that you could have a number of people visit websites that relate to your business, but if they have opted out your advert previously, it will not appear on their page no matter how much you have bid for the slot. 

Despite this potential negative, the positives of using Facebook Exchange are huge. This is underlined by the fact that Facebook are predicted to increase their advertising revenue this year by 60% to over $5 billion.

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