Here are some tips from Mona Elesseily, the VP of Online Marketing Strategy at Page Zero Media and Jennifer Sheahan from FBadsLAB.

Studies show that the three types of images that convert best on Facebook ads are:

1. Smiling Women
2. Bright Logos
3. Faces

Happy Women

The best performing images to use in Facebook advertising are of happy women. Women who look overjoyed, free and are looking directly at the camera convert best. Also, try images of women who joyfully have their arms in the air.

Colorful Logos

Try logos that are colorful and engaging. If your company’s logo is boring or bland, make look colorful by adding a colorful border, background or text. Definitely avoid blue and white as the colors blend too much with Facebook’s colors (think contrast to capture attention).
Images with text on them (calls to action) convert better than images alone. In general, ads with a “reason” convert better than ads with no reason. So don’t just tell people about your accounting services but include a reason like: 1) end of tax year special or 2) an online promotion with savings available for 3 days only.

Use colors in your image that contrast with Facebook’s shades of blue— they command more attention and stand out from the rest of the website.

Note: product images do not convert as well as straight up colorful logos.

Headshot

Ads with people, and especially close ups of faces and eyes tend to get a higher click through rate. In other words, give your ad a human touch! Happy pictures where people are looking directly at the camera work best.

Extra Tip: Image Size

It’s best to upload horizontal (landscape) images to ensure you’re maximizing the space available, which is 110×80 pixels

4 Tips To Make Your Facebook Ads Convert Better is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Read more: Q3 ’11 Internet Advertising Revenues Up 22% from Year Ago, Climb to Nearly $7.9 Billion, According to IAB and PwC.

Q3 ’11 Internet Advertising Revenues Up 22% to $7.9B is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

B2B Marketers Still Unsure about Social Media Strategies. Almost two-thirds of B2B marketing executives view social media as an extremely important or a very important channel to interact with customers, partners and stakeholders. However, only 7% of the survey group felt that their organization was leveraging social media very heavily.

Social Media: Catching up with the Banks. Banks and financial institutions are behind the curve when it comes to using social media as a communications tool. They are catching up, but there is still a high level of uncertainty regarding how to best utilise it.

Why Americans Use Social Media. 66% of online adults use social media platforms. These internet users say that connections with family members and friends (both new and old) are a primary consideration in their adoption of social media tools. Roughly two thirds of social media users say that staying in touch with current friends and family members is a major reason they use these sites.

US Social Local Advertising Revenues to Reach $2.3 Billion in 2015. BIA/Kelsey’s first forecast of geotargeted social media projects the local segment of US social media advertising revenues will grow from $400 million in 2010 to $2.3 billion in 2015, representing a compound annual growth rate of 33.3 percent. During the same forecast period overall US social media ad revenues to grow from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $8.3 billion in 2015 (CAGR: 25.7 percent).

Accountants Hesitate to Embrace Social Media as Business Tool. 62 percent of participants do not trust the information on social networking sites. 58 percent of participants think face-to-face is the best use of time. 39 percent of respondents’ businesses have a social media strategy. 66 percent of respondents are concerned about the security of their personal information. 22 percent follow thought leaders in their industry on social media sites. LinkedIn is the most popular social media tool for professional use.

Midmarket Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study. Understand individuals as well as markets. Determine how data can help build customer relationships. Strengthen brand identity and, by extension, customer loyalty. Demonstrate the ROI of marketing programs.

Study on Social Media Adoption by Companies in China. 87% of respondents said they use social media on a daily basis. However, frequency of social media use varied significantly depending on the type of ownership and on the industry, with non-traditional industries and SMEs having the highest acceptance and use of social media.

Companies continue to struggle with social media measurement: report. Companies are still grappling with the issue of measuring social media, though fewer are reporting that they are unable to measure ROI (37%) compared with 47% last year. 41% of company respondents report that do not have an ROI figure for any of the money they spend on social media marketing, while 26% say they can attribute an ROI figure to a tiny amount of the money spent on social media. Just 8% can determine ROI for all of their social media spending.

88 percent believe social media marketing has business impact. The reasons for using social media content identified by the poll include improved brand awareness, lead generation and customer service among other things. However, some companies said they weren’t really sure why they use it despite seeing positive benefits from the service. This speaks to the rising need to set social marketing goals; as Brafton has reported, just 23 percent of businesses are happy with their social analytics and setting social success metrics was a topic at the recent SES Chicago conference.

Significant Shift In Small Businesses’ Willingness To Use Social Media Marketing. small businesses report allocating more time to social media marketing to engage their targets. A full 81 percent reported using social media to market their businesses, up from 73 percent in the spring of 2011. Of those using social media marketing, Facebook® continues to be the tool of choice for small businesses with 96 percent reporting using the tool. Twitter® is quickly gaining ground; usage surged in the last six months, from 60 percent in Spring 2011 to 76 percent today.

Digital content top priority for travel companies. Social media, content, mobile and apps, and natural search engine optimisation will be the top four areas for travel organizations with 83% planning to increase overall digital marketing spend in 2012, according to a new global survey released today by digital travel online content specialists Frommer’s Unlimited.

Social Media Weekend: Latest Social Media Surveys, Reports and Trends is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Businesses are now seeing more and more value in advertising through Facebook. Though, just like Google AdWords, there are several areas you will want to pay attention to get the best results. So below you can find the main areas to think about:

Creating a Facebook Ad Campaign

There are three main steps for creating a Facebook Ad campaign:

1. Identify your goals;

2. Define who you want to reach;

3. Creating your ads and setting the budget.

1. Identify your goals

Before you start, you need to know, what you want to achieve with your campaign. Do you want to increase the Like’s of your company’s Facebook page, increase traffic to your website, build brand awareness, sell a product or generate leads.

If you have more than 1 goal, I suggest you make a different ad campaigns for each goal. For example, 1 campaign for increasing the Like’s of your Facebook page and another campaign to increase traffic to your website.

2. Target your audience

You can create insanely targeted ads using Facebook advertising. And the narrower the target group, the more effective your campaign is.

Because users supply so much infromation to Facebook through their profiles, you can access more demographic data than in any other advertising platform, even Google AdWords.

Facebook offers targeting based on the following parameters:

• Location. By city, state, province, or country.

• Demographics. By age range, gender, language or marital status (you can even target users based on their birthdays).

• Likes and interests. For example, If I indicate on my profile that I enjoy reading. Company that sells books would benefit for including that term in their ad campaign.

• Education and work. You can direct your campaign to students in a specific college or people with a particular level of education.

• Connections on Facebook. Includes connections to Groups, Pages, Events or Facebook apps.

3. Creating your ads and setting the budget

The steps for creating Facebook ads are:

1. Design the ad
2. Determine the target audience
3. Select a name for the campaign
4. Set pricing
5. Submit the ad for review by Facebook.

Design the Ad

Facebook Ads consists of a title(25 characters), body(135 characters), a destination URL that is hyperlinked from the title, and a image(110x80px)

Some limitations:
If you’re promoting your company Facebook page, Facebook’s policy is to use the name of your Fan page as the title of your ad. So when choosing this option, you can’t get creative with your ad title.

Name you campaign & set the pricing

A campaign is an ad or group of ads that share a daily budget and schedule. There’s no limit on how many ads you can have in an ad group.

Ad Pricing

You can choose between two different types of bids on Facebook. Cost Per Click (CPC), which means that payment is only required when someone clicks the ad. And Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM), which means that payment is made each time your ad has been shown 1000 times.

Daily budget

With daily budget you can set the maximum amount you want to spend on your ads in one day.

Lifetime budget

Instead of setting your budget for a day, with Lifetime Budget you can set it for the entire lifetime of your campaign.

Max bid

Facebook will recommend max bid for you, but usually you can set your bid lower than that. But remember that you are bidding against other advertisers, so it pays to be competitive.

Submit your ad

So you’ve designed your ad, set the target group and budget, it’s now time to submit your ad to Facebook. It will be reviewed by Facebook and if your ad meets the site’s Advertising Guidelines, you’re ready to go!

After your campaign

1. Regularly update your Ad texts. This can involve the smallest things like rearranging words in a sentence. You can also try to combine ads; take the headline from Ad1 and use it with the body text of Ad2 and vice versa.
2. Regularly update your Ad images. For example; if you’re using simple graphic ad images, just change the background color. Sometimes just changing the image will double your Click-Through Rate.
3. Change or widen your target audience. Use this when you keep getting impressions from the same people and not generating clicks.

Facebook Advertising Basics is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

But what are the characteristics of a rocking Social Media campaign? How do companies gain millions of fans on Facebook and attract thousands of people to take part their campaigns?

Here are 15 tips for creating a kick-ass Social Media campaign.

1. Don’t give out an iPad.
Unless you work for Apple, but otherwise just don’t do it. Please.

2. Define your goals.
Do you want fans on Facebook or newsletter subscribers? What do you want achieve with your campaign? Figure it out before you start.

3. Don’t spam.
You hate spam, don’t you? So don’t spam your customer with links to your product or website more than you have to. Try to be helpful and insightful instead.

4. Provide value.
Why should anyone take part of your campaign? What’s my gain? This can be either physical or mental. Great campaigns have both.

5. Brand it well.
Use your logo, your colors, your overall visual identity. If your campaign is using pictures or videos, brand those as well.

6. Measure your campaign.
This is a big one but still not everybody is doing this. So be sure to hook up Google Analytics or other measuring tools you might like.

7. Have a kick-ass copy.
Don’t use big words. It’s important to make sense and be memorable.

8. Don’t direct sell.
Instead generate leads with your Social Media campaign and sell to those leads later on.

9. Be innovative.
I think I already covered this one – don’t give out an iPad. It’s the outrageously awesome campaigns people will remember and talk about.

10. Be organized.
Plan your steps. You should know when and what to do in every part of your campaign.

11. Be consistent
Don’t leave big gaps in your campaign but don’t overkill with your messages. Find the sweet spot.

12. Have a magnet/bait.
Use free ebooks, discount codes, vouchers and so on to convert your visitors into leads.

13. Don’t be everywhere.
Focus on quality over quantity. Find the right Social Network for your product and campaign.

14. Have fun.
Almost every successful campaign uses humor to connect with their visitors. This will make you look friendly to your audience.

15. Use the right network.
Video campaigns will work better on YouTube than of Facebook, though Facebook supports videos.

There you go. Now you know how to run a well oiled Social Media campaign.

Did I leave some important characteristics or tips out? If so, leave it in the comments below.

______________________
Image credit Evelyn Giggles

15 Tips for Creating a Kick-Ass Social Media Campaign is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

What are QR Codes?

The QR (Quick Response) Code is a square bar-code originally developed by the Denso Corp. to help Toyota track parts quickly and efficiently. The software to scan these codes is now adapted so it could be read by any camera phone with the proper app. Since the technology has its own ISO standard, and because the Denso Corp decided not to charge for it, anyone can use this technology.

What the QR Code can do for you?

Use of the QR Codes has spread rapidly. The main and most powerful use of the QR Code is the ability to encode information on a small square. The data scanned enables the viewer to immediately jump to a website embedded in the code saving them from having to laboriously type out a long address code.

Send people to pages that have more information about the product or ask the to participate in a sweepstakes. You can do it in a showroom or on the product. Put the QR code on the billboard or print ad and drive people to your site for more information. You can do it even in the TV ad. QR codes make it painless to the user to get to the next step.

QR Codes are used at subway and train stations for real-time updates or on magazine labels and in newspapers. Calvin Klein recently embedded a QR code in an ad campaign which gave people the ability to download a special video.

The flexibility of using QR Codes lets the user go to a website from the banner on the side of a building with just one click. These codes can be used to provide more in-depth information such as reviews or technical specs of your product. They can even be used to replace the 1-800 numbers for the ‘How am I doing’ on the back of delivery vehicles.

This technology helps you target people by the QR codes they use. You can put different codes to products in different sales locations. You can display different content and promotions to website visitors based on the codes they use.

You can use QR codes on your website to help people get to that content on their phones without having to type in long web addresses.

QR Codes not only allows you to provide extra and exclusive content to your clients, it also helps you track potential clients. Instead of trading business cards at an expo or trade show, a quick scan of the QR code on a card collects all the needed information.

The possibilities for using QR codes are endless, as more and more uses are being developed each day. These are just a few of the ways this technology gives businesses the power of becoming more efficient and connecting with clients in creative and exciting ways.

Additional resources:

• You can find more information about QR codes in Wikipedia.
• Here you can make your own QR codes

Please comment, what experience have you had with QR codes as a user or marketer.

______________________
Image credits Michael Sauers

How to Use QR Codes to Market Your Business? is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

they will generally drive more mobile traffic at a lower cost.

More from Google Mobile Ads Blog:

Mobile website optimization now factors into mobile search ads quality.

Mobile website optimization will now get you lower cost per click is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Hangout got a lot of great improvements and is now also available on mobile app. Again, no luck for Google Apps users.

• Hangouts on mobile
• Topical hangouts
• Broadcast you TV station
• Screen sharing, drawing and collaborative document editing

Also, Google is putting the full weight of its front page behind the effort to get more user to join up. Here it is, every marketers wet dream, advertising on the front page of Google:

I really hope they can pull this off as it seems to have quite invigorating effect on Facebook. And a hint about the ad on the front page, you really make people act when you add call to action…

Google Pushing Plus is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Read the full article 20 Hidden Marketing Techniques That Make Consumers Spend More.

20 Hidden Marketing Techniques That Make Consumers Spend More is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Read more: Interactive marketing to approach 1/3 of all ad spend by 2016 (and how we know).

Interactive marketing to approach 1/3 of all ad spend by 2016 is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media