But everyone (including myself) generally has something to say on the topic, and much of the advice can be conflicting or confusing. Some of it can also be very useful, absolutely, but a lot of time it is simply individuals broadcasting their own questionable levels of expertise and hands on knowledge.

The fact is, you should stop listening to them. And yes, I do realize the irony in writing this. But please, continue reading.

They Don’t Understand Your Community

Obviously, guides, recommendations and entire books aren’t written with just your business in mind. Of course, you could — insert your business name here — wherever appropriate, but the fact is that those guides are written with more than one dumbfounded business owner in mind because, simply put, they aren’t writing for you, just at you.

Which is just one reason why you shouldn’t be listening to everything they say. They don’t know your business or the community that you have built around it, so they can’t really speak for your business as a whole. Sure they might know how to drive engagement, manage crises and create order out of what is almost consistently chaotic about social media, but they don’t understand what sort of goals you might have in mind, or just what sort of community that your business is built around. Their general recommendations might be useful in developing some sort of initial plan or expectation when it comes to social media, but it won’t be until you go hands on with social media that you will be able to discover how to effectively develop your own community.

Only You Can Solve Your Own Problems

Unfortunately, there is no universal social media help line. In fact, Facebook doesn’t even have telephone customer support. There are help forums, certainly, and you can submit problems to both Facebook, Twitter and other social networks in an effort to find resolutions. But those may take hours, and in social media that might as well be a year.

Regardless of the sort of expectations and guides that you may have read heading into the harrowing jungle that is social media, you will undoubtedly run into some snags or — worse — serious problems. Whether that be as simple as responding to basic requests, or as complex as knowing what to do in situations when social media blows up in your face and your customers start posting all sorts of nasty things target towards your social media accounts, only you can ultimately determine how to solve those problems. 

They will occur. You might sweat, a lot. But don’t worry. Even if they go horribly wrong the first time, social media offers businesses plenty of opportunity for redemption.

Learning by Doing

Finally, it’s also important to discuss the matter of learning through trial-and-error, particularly as it relates to social media. It is significant because, for any business, that might be one of the only ways to learn how to effectively manage social media. In order to start off, just do things. It doesn’t matter what those things are, as long as they have some sort of purpose. Post a status without a picture, post a picture without a status, post a link, etc., etc. If something works, keep doing it. If something doesn’t, stop doing it. Rinse. Repeat.

Eventually, you will learn how to be consistent and, most importantly, effective in engaging users through social media. You might get scarily efficient. You might not. The fact is, by doing something — anything, really — you are effectively learning.

Just as reading a good book (or a few hundred) can teach you how to write, writing, too, can teach you how to, well, write. It can teach you about yourself as a person, where there is room for improvement, and how you can craft pieces in the future in order to make them much more appealing from a reader’s standpoint.

If you read this far, kudos to you. You can stop now.

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In the case of Facebook — in this example, the company that relies on that ad revenue to fuel their own growth — this recently did happen. GM — their huge corporate client — recently pulled their entire advertising budget out of Facebook’s paid advertising, instead choosing to focus primarily on Facebook’s free brand pages, and other forms of advertising.

For a company that is set to IPO tomorrow, with an estimated valuation of over $100 billion, GM’s seeming disapproval of Facebook’s ad program would appear to be a giant blemish on Facebook’s record, signaling the beginning of a mass exodus away from the massive social network’s ad network.

Questioning Facebook’s Effectiveness from a User Standpoint

Certainly, there have been many-a-question raised about Facebook’s own practices — its transparency, user-privacy, and what it does with user-information — but one thing that generally avoids the media’s attention, in part because it might not be the most interesting thing to report on, is the issue of advertising, and whether or not Facebook ads are actually effectiveness.

A recent Associated Press-CNBC poll found that while 82% of Facebook’s revenue from the first quarter of 2012 came from advertising — 82% of over $1 billion — all of that revenue is generated by less than half of the users on the ubiquitous social networking site. As the poll found, 57% of users indicated that they ‘never’ click on Facebook’s ads. Even more dispiriting, 83% of total users indicated that they ‘hardly ever‘ click on Facebook ads. Beyond that, less than half of those surveyed indicated that they trusted Facebook as a place to purchase goods through. For large and small businesses hoping to find marketing success through Facebook and its ad programs, these numbers aren’t good.

Starting to Panic? 

To add insult to injury, Facebook — in light of their impending IPO — recently saw a quarter that, despite a huge increase in revenue, saw a not-so-insignificant decrease of 12% in profit. Facebook chalks that up to a bad ad season, but skeptics on Madison Avenue — home to some of the most premier advertising companies in the world — still remain. There still lies the question of whether or not Facebook’s ads are actually effective not only in driving its own users towards individual brand pages, but also in creating a ROI for those advertising dollars.

And further, with Facebook relying primarily on banner ads for their revenue — something that, in recent studies, has proven to be minimally effective – it would then seem that Facebook’s reliance on dated advertising methods is more of a hamstring than a proponent to their overall growth.

Mobile Ads: The New Frontier? 

And while Facebook’s ads have been seemingly floundering with low engagement rates, if any, from users, Twitter ads have proven that placing ads in users’ streams can generally be far more effective than simply focusing on banner ads.

And with Facebook’s mobile applications, mobile advertising in users’ timelines might be the next step for Facebook in terms of advertising revenue. With Facebook’s recent acquisition of Instagram, and especially recently Lightbox, Facebook has indicated that it is very, very serious about achieving success in the mobile-space. Despite having well over a hundred million users connecting to Facebook from their mobile devices, Facebook doesn’t currently place ads on their mobile network.

That will soon change, and as some have estimated, it could lead to billions of dollars in additional revenue per year for Facebook. A huge chunk of a change, for sure.

The Importance of a Like

And yet, despite GM’s recent pull-out of their estimated $10 million ad-budget on Facebook (a pittance) there still remains the fact that in buying a ‘like’, advertisers are buying a lot more than just a sale. A Facebook ‘like’ is more of a relationship that is intended to be cultivated than it is a customer that will immediately turn into real dollars. Like Google, Facebook is a free service that intends to remain free. Users are free to use it for as long as they want, and brands are free to create pages and interact with users in any capacity that they like.

But also like Google, some might choose to go the organic route — focusing on driving clicks by simply creating content that will drive those clicks — as opposed to simply placing advertising to achieve what can essentially be done through organic content creation.

But that notion — that many advertisers might choose to go the organic route — shouldn’t concern Facebook. Facebook is a seemingly inseparable part of our culture now, and they know it. Advertisers will flock to the service most likely for years, and that will drive the growth of the company.

Finally, with Facebook set to IPO tomorrow, Zuckerberg and friends should be able to rest easy knowing that, at least immediately, they should all be very, very wealthy once the stock market opens.

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Here’s how any business can find out exactly what their customers want through social media.

Ask Them

I have already explored this idea in depth on this blog, but it doesn’t hurt to further emphasize it: One of the best ways to find out what your customers want from you and your social media presence is to simply ask them. Ask the what they think about a new product or idea, and run with it. Respond to their ideas and show them that you are listening.

Of course, this isn’t nearly as simple of an approach as it’s made out to be. Asking basic questions on Facebook or through Twitter can, in a lot of cases, yield minimal results. That’s why it’s important to carefully consider, as with everything social media related, what you are hoping to gain from asking them. Do you want new ideas, or simply feedback on current ones? Carefully craft the message you’re asking for the response that you want to receive, and make it known that you are hoping to gain feedback. If you have a history of being involved and engaging on your social media presences, people will respond! I swear.

Use Analytics to Find Strong Ideas

Though social media is generally seen as a huge asset to any business, quantifying that success has been seen as a huge challenge for businesses. Still, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites (and social media hubs such as Sprout Social and Hootsuite), generally have very robust analytics tools in order to help businesses to better quantify just how how many of those likes, shares or tweets convert into real website or foot traffic.

Which is why it is so important for businesses to use those analytics. Not simply to look at them in order to get a sense of the numbers, but to get a sense of what ideas work, and what ideas don’t. And this is the perfect way to judge the success of individual campaigns, products and other important factors for any business. Becoming familiar with the analytics themselves — what they mean — and then determining the most successful ideas based off of that information can help any business determine exactly what their customers want. Say, for example, a store owner thought that his new product idea was golden, but it was generally perceived pretty poorly through social media even before it was even conceived. Assuming that store owner has an active social media presence, one can reasonably assume that that product idea probably isn’t the greatest.

Try Exclusive Social Media-only Promotions

Finally, another great way to find out exactly what social media fans and followers want is to simply run promotions, or present new products and/or ideas exclusively through social media. By only presenting those promotions through one channel of marketing — social media — it will therefore be much easier to gauge the success or failure of campaigns on an individual level.

Ultimately, the more familiar and accustomed any business becomes with social media, the more readily/easily they will be able to understand their users and will therefore become more familiar with what ideas work and what don’t. Social media generally award those who are active and sharing good, meaningful content, so simply being active and having something significant to say is already a huge portion of the battle. Everything else is simply a matter of tinkering.

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But of course, there are ways to sort through that babble in order to find those relevant conversations. Here’s a simple guide to help any user and/or business sort through the mess that is Twitter. In 140 characters or less, naturally. 

1. Define Your Goals: What do you want to accomplish? Who do you want to talk to? Customers? Influencers?

2. Establish Content: Pictures, videos, links, blogs, etc. What you want to share. How you want to share.

3. Develop a Schedule: W/ that content, develop a daily calendar. Amount of tweets varies on type of business. More active w/ customers = generally more tweets.

4. Retweet v. Reply: Retweet something that you find interesting, moving, and want to share with users. Reply when you want to start a conversation.

5. Hashtags: Hashtag when you want to organize something. Search hashtags when you want to find conversations. Engage w/ them. For more, click.

6. Use Apps to Stay Organized, Manage Presences: For multiple accounts, Sprout Social and HootSuite are great tools to manage, organize presences. Use them. They are awesome.

7. Stay on Track: Sprout Social, HootSuite have discovery tools. Twilert is also great for discovery and alerts. Google Alerts, too. Find content w/ them.

8. Use Analytics: Track, analyze, judge current results w/ HootSuite, Google Analytics for websites, Sprout Social. Tweak current strategies. Try, try again.

9. Twitter on Mobile: Management tools have mobile apps, so does Twitter. Use them to keep track of presences.

10. Be Consistent, Timely: Engage with any, all relevant conversations. Retweet, reply in timely fashion. Try within a few hours, at most.

These are simple, basic outlines for any user or business, and everything can obviously get far more complex. The best way for any business and user to become familiar with Twitter and all of the resources surrounding it is to simply start using them. Tweet, retweet, reply, link, post pictures, etc. etc. Simply becoming involved in the massive conversation that is Twitter will help you to familiarize yourself with it and develop a real, comprehensive strategy.

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In this article, I will explore just a few ways that businesses can develop and optimize Facebook ad campaigns that work.

1. Have A Plan 

The first step for any successful business venture is often to have a strategy or a reason to be doing something. Whether it’s a new direction, location, or product for a company, having a why before heading knee-deep into the water generally doesn’t hurt.

And the same holds absolutely true for Facebook ads. Though ads without any sort of strategy will work and convert, resulting in more fans and most likely greater engagement, the most successful ad campaigns will be the ones that have some sort of follow-up strategy beyond the initial contact. For example, having some sort of event or promotion that potential fans can enter in will generally yield greater results (and be easier to track) than simply asking users to like a page, because you’ll have the added benefit of being able to track where those users are going.

Further, it is also extremely important to consider the particular demographics that are hoping to be targeted. For example, if a particular business is a luxury car dealership, they probably wouldn’t want to target high-school students that are interested in fast food. On the other hand, they might want to target vice presidents of companies or lawyers that are interested in Rolex watches and Starbucks coffee.

2. Create Many, Many Ads

Though some businesses might be able to find success by using the same ad over and over again, generally, Facebook users will get bored or tired of ads after only viewing them a few times. That’s why it is important to test out many — think 10s — ads in an effort to appeal to a wide variety of users. Additionally, testing out different types of ads — for example, sponsored stories v. simple text ads — in order to find out what yields the greatest conversion rates initially can help any business to develop an efficient and effective Facebook advertising campaign.

But the importance of trying out many ads cannot be diminished — generally the best Facebook ad strategies are those that work through trial-and-error, discovering which ads will result in greater conversion rates, and what sort of ads (and copy) to avoid.

3. Measure Results and Optimize or Rethink

The final step is to then use Facebook’s detailed ad analytics to determine which ads are the most successful and which aren’t. Ideally, a successful ad will have a very high like-rate, while keeping the cost-per-click on the low-side of the spectrum. Find out which ads have been the most successful, and attempt to apply those same concepts to other ads.

On the other hand, if none of the ads are successful, it might be time to rethink the entire advertising campaign altogether. If nothing is working, head back to the drawing board and consider new ways to appeal new users. Are there any sorts of events or specials that, if highlighted, would catch the eye of a potential fan? What are the most intriguing aspects of your business that you can think of?

Of course, there are many other factors that go into making a successful Facebook ad campaign, such as what sort of products a business is highlighting, what type of business it is, and others. That said, just because an advertisement isn’t working doesn’t necessarily mean that that business can’t find success through writing. As advertising genius David Ogilvy once wrote, “there are no boring products, only boring writers.” In essence, it isn’t simply a matter of having something to advertise, but rather advertising it in such a way so as to attract the attention of Facebook users. If the ad bores users, come up with better ways to appeal to them. Don’t just keep banging your head against the same dysfunctional advertisement over and over.

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