{"id":9838,"date":"2017-10-15T22:06:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T03:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/article\/\/"},"modified":"2017-10-15T22:06:27","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T03:06:27","slug":"facebook-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/facebook-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Can pictures of dogs really help you stand out on Facebook?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9847\" src=\"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"615\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog-300x154.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog-768x394.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog-1024x525.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog-260x133.jpg 260w, https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog-50x26.jpg 50w, https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/dog-146x75.jpg 146w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/>Facebook is the new phone book &#8211; if your business doesn&#8217;t have a Facebook page then you really aren&#8217;t in business.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2016, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/2016\/11\/11\/social-media-update-2016\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">68 percent of all adults in the U.S.<\/a> (and 79 percent of online adults) use Facebook. It is by far the most popular social media site. How dominant is Facebook?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Facebook: Used by 79 percent of Internet users and 68 percent of all U.S. adults.<\/li>\n<li>Instagram: Used by 32 percent of Internet users and 28 percent of all U.S. adults.<\/li>\n<li>Pinterest: Used by 31 percent of Internet users and 26 percent of all U.S. adults.<\/li>\n<li>LinkedIn: Used by 29 percent of Internet users and 25 percent of all U.S. adults.<\/li>\n<li>Twitter: Used by 24 percent of Internet users and 21 percent of all U.S. adults.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, that&#8217;s no surprise and millions of business owners are flocking to Facebook to try to sell their services or products to this ever-expanding audience. In March of 2016, according to a story by Business Insider, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/facebook-adds-a-million-advertisers-in-7-months-2017-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">3 million businesses were advertising on Facebook. By April of this year, that had already grown to 5 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So it is increasingly hard to get your business to stand out. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wordstream.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WordStream<\/a>, an online advertising agency, has a guide to &#8220;10 Smart &amp; Easy Facebook Marketing Ideas&#8221; that might help you be one of the few to cut through the clutter.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Target very specific audiences:<\/strong> Would you like to target Hispanic speaking individuals in their 40s who have grade-school kids? That&#8217;s possible with Facebook&#8217;s ad targeting feature.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cool giveaways:<\/strong> It is easy to run contests on Facebook such as &#8220;share your favorite dessert&#8221; and requiring an answer, a reason and a photo and give away a free restaurant gift certificate to the winner. People like free stuff and if your incentive is good enough you&#8217;ll garner lots of shares.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Create enticing but short video posts:\u00a0<\/strong>Video is king on the Internet. The amount of Facebook video views doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion in 2015 alone. \u00a0People are looking to be entertained. But like everything else, are attention spans are shorter and shorter. Long videos don&#8217;t do nearly as well, so be funny or poignant and be quick.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Images should show eye contact: <\/strong>If your ad has a call-to-action and an image, make sure that image is pointing toward the call-to-action. People follow directional cues.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Post images of dogs acting like humans or babies acting like adults:<\/strong> Seriously, this is one of WordStream&#8217;s tips. The larger point is that you shouldn&#8217;t take yourself too seriously in Facebook marketing. <a href=\"https:\/\/quickfansandlikes.com\/blog\/viral-photos\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Six of the 20 most viral photos of all time<\/a>, according to quickfansandlikes.com, feature animals of some kinds, including a bear bouncing off a mattress, a dog swimming underwater and a grumpy-looking cat.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Target the leads you already have on Facebook:<\/strong> You can upload a list of emails right into Facebook and then show your ads to that audience using the Facebook Custom Audiences feature.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Clone your main revenue-generating audience:\u00a0<\/strong>Facebook&#8217;s Lookalike Audience feature allows you to take an audience you already have and find new leads by targeting users with similar attributes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Feature yourself with fun photos: <\/strong>Even as the world becomes more digital, people still like to do business with someone they know and like. Show the people behind your brand to connect with your audience.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Promote your own best content:\u00a0<\/strong>Analytics allows you to see quickly what content is resonating with your audience. Put your promotional budget behind the content that has a proven audience. It may be evergreen, but it&#8217;s a more effective use of your dollars.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use emojis:\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, the Emoji Movie was terrible and they are easy to mock, but, according to AdWeek, 92 percent of online users use emojis and many feel they express their feelings better than words.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook is the new phone book &#8211; if your business&hellip;<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/facebook-ideas\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10,4],"tags":[3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}