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Structured Data: SEO Mythbusting – What Google Wants

Structured data formats are rules that standardize the structure and content of a webpage.

Google is asking all of us to surface structured data to their crawlers by marking up our HTML with RDFa and Microformats.

Google’s John Mueller made it clear that Google preferred JSON-LD structured data.

Wow unless you are super technical this is all mumbo jumbo. “schema markup” and “structured data” WTH….

It sounds and looks complicated, but it is something anyone can learn to do.

So what does this mean and why should you care?

Basically Google wants this, and if you want your site to rank somewhere inside hte first 10 pages then, you has better do what Google wants.

After all just doing this can give you a significant SEO boost and also increase your rankings.

Most people simply put human readable dat on their site – this looks great but it makes it harder for Google to find and crawl.

This markup makes it easier for Google to know what hte page is about without guessing

Check out this code direct from Google

You would do that by using this markup:

So for example you have a receipe page 

The markup you could use is

———————————

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Party Coffee Cake</title>
    <script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org/",
      "@type": "Recipe",
      "name": "Party Coffee Cake",
      "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": "Mary Stone"
      },
      "datePublished": "2018-03-10",
      "description": "This coffee cake is awesome and perfect for parties.",
      "prepTime": "PT20M"
    }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
  <h2>Party coffee cake recipe</h2>
  <p>
    This coffee cake is awesome and perfect for parties.
  </p>
  </body>
</html>

—————————-

 

This looks complicated so to help you out Google has created the Structured Data Mark-up Helper so web masters can add schema mark-up to their sites easier.

 

 

SEO changes rapidly, what ranked a site quickly one day may not work the next. Especially if these are blackhat methods.

Google recognizes this so have put together a channel to help webmasters find out What Google Wants.

One of these channel that Google has created is called SEO Mythbusting. 
 
Below is a video from this series
 
Under this video is the transcript from the video so you can follow it if needed.
 
 
In this bonus material from the filming of last week’s episode (Googlebot: SEO Mythbusting), Martin Splitt (WebMaster Trends Analyst, Google) and his guest Suz Hinton (Cloud Developer Advocate, Microsoft) dive into the topic of “new microformats”: structured data!
 
Documentation mentioned in this episode:
Intro to structured data → https://goo.gle/structured-data-intro
Overview of supported structured data in Google Search → https://goo.gle/search-gallery
Structured data testing tool → https://goo.gle/2K9rTo5
Rich results rest → https://goo.gle/30SEWA3
Rich result status reports → https://goo.gle/rich-results-report
 
 
 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

 

SUZ HINTON: There
is one term that I’m

going to mention
to you just based

on this is the reason why
I had to submit the URL

to be re-indexed.

And that’s microformats.

MARTIN SPLITT: Oh!

All right.

SUZ HINTON: So can
we talk about–

are they still a thing?

I haven’t really had to do
a lot of SEO optimization

for a while.

And I knew microformats
was such a huge thing

because let’s say you’ve
got a product page

and it has reviews
on it and you want

to show the little stars and all
of that kind of rich content.

And every time I made a
tweak and we deployed,

I would have to then submit
to get re-crawled and see

if the results got more written.

And that was definitely a
very slow feedback cycle.

MARTIN SPLITT: Yes.

SUZ HINTON: So
what is the state?

Is microformat still a thing?

And are there better resources
out there right now for us

to be able to pull
that rich content out?

MARTIN SPLITT: You’re
going to be very happy.

And we have much better things.

SUZ HINTON: Yay!

MARTIN SPLITT: They
are still a thing.

But they are now
called structured data.

SUZ HINTON: Structured data.

MARTIN SPLITT: And we
are using JSON-LD, so

JSON for Linked Data.

SUZ HINTON: Yeah, this
is all new terms to me.

MARTIN SPLITT: Right.

And you probably used
literally the microdata

attributes in HTML.

SUZ HINTON: Yes.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah, we were using them.

And they were very hit and miss.

MARTIN SPLITT: Yes.

SUZ HINTON: It was very easy
to just mess up one tiny thing.

And the validator
didn’t catch it.

And then the stars
would disappear.

And we’d be like [GASP].

MARTIN SPLITT: And we
have moved on from there.

SUZ HINTON: OK, that’s good.

MARTIN SPLITT: So there is now–
schema.org is an open source

organization where people can
submit or discuss or change

or do stuff with
the semantic data

that they want to
put on the web.

SUZ HINTON: Got it.

MARTIN SPLITT: And people
that’s participating–

there is much more
semantic data out there

than we are supporting
in search results.

But a bunch of it is supported
in the search results.

So for instance, if you
have an event that we want

to have showing up
with the location

and if you can get
tickets and who

is the performer and
all that kind of stuff–

if you have a recipe
where you might

have an image or the
instructions on how to make it

or the time it takes
to make it and reviews,

how nice this recipe might
be, articles, books, and TV

series, all sorts of things,
we have documentation on that

specifically as well.

If you go to
developers.google.com/search,

you find all the
supported types.

And they show up nicely
in the search results.

So you get a little
preview picture.

And then you get the stars
and all that kind of stuff.

SUZ HINTON: Oh, this
would have been amazing.

MARTIN SPLITT: It’s fantastic.

And it’s JSON.

SUZ HINTON: Which
is so much easier.

MARTIN SPLITT: It’s the
script tags with JSON in it.

It’s so much easier.

SUZ HINTON: It’s just not
little meta attribute things?

MARTIN SPLITT: Correct, yes.

So you have your JSON block.

And we have what’s called the
Structured Data Testing Tool.

That is a little dated by now.

But it supports– generally,
basically everything

that we know of shows up
as either valid or invalid.

And then we have the
Rich Results Test,

because the Structured Data
Test, while being very generic,

is also not very specific
to what you want to achieve.

You want to probably achieve
the nice little stars showing up

in the search results.

This is what we
call rich results.

And there’s the Rich
Results Test for it.

And that even
gives you a preview

of how that might look
like in the search results.

There’s no guarantee
that it does

look like that in
the search results

because people have been
using it to spam stuff, like–

SUZ HINTON: Yeah, true.

MARTIN SPLITT: I have
a bazillion reviews.

And then we’re
like, yeah, you just

have some JavaScript
generating fake reviews.

That’s not really–

SUZ HINTON: Well, how do
you actually use the tool?

Because I remember you used to
have to dump your entire HTML

file in there.

MARTIN SPLITT: You
[? don’t. ?] [INAUDIBLE]

SUZ HINTON: And if you
did it too many times,

you got timed out.

MARTIN SPLITT: Right.

SUZ HINTON: Yeah.

MARTIN SPLITT: But that
doesn’t happen anymore.

SUZ HINTON: Oh, OK.

That’s pretty exciting.

MARTIN SPLITT: So
you have two options.

You can dump a URL
in it, which is nice.

And you can even use ngrok or
something if you have a local–

SUZ HINTON: Oh, you
could do local host?

MARTIN SPLITT: Yes.

SUZ HINTON: Oh,
this is very fancy.

MARTIN SPLITT: Or
you can even also

still do like you dump
your HTML in there.

We execute the JavaScript.

So if you’re using JavaScript
within that code dump,

that’s fine.

SUZ HINTON: Oh, wonderful.

MARTIN SPLITT: If
you’re running it– yes.

And you can basically
live debug as you type.

You press a button and
it goes like, nope.

And you’re like, oh, damn it.

And you get the feedback here.

And it’s like, missing
performer for your event.

And I’m like, OK, sorry, sorry.

And you write it in.

And then it reruns it.

And you’re like, OK, cool.

This is what I want.

And I can take it
back to [INAUDIBLE]

SUZ HINTON: That is awesome.

MARTIN SPLITT: And
yeah, we have that tool.

We have Search
Console that gives you

a live view of what
happens on your page,

also for structured data.

Yeah, microdata is not
that much of a thing.

But the structured data
is still going strong.

SUZ HINTON: Well, it sounds
like it’s come a long way.

That’s very exciting.

MARTIN SPLITT: It does.

SUZ HINTON: If I’m ever
working for a large retailer

ever again, then I
feel like I got this.

MARTIN SPLITT: If you have a
blog, add the article markup.

You might get [INAUDIBLE]

SUZ HINTON: Oh, so OK.

I’m going to look at
the schema for that.

That would be like
author and stuff.

MARTIN SPLITT: And other sources
might pull the data as well,

right?

It’s an open source format.

So theoretically,
voice assistance

could use it as well.

So just imagine if
you have a recipe blog

and then you stand
in the kitchen,

go like, hey, assistant
thing– whatever

it is, whatever company
you’re choosing.

There’s a variety of
options these days, right?

And then the thing goes like
yeah, Martin’s apple pie.

First step– take some
apples and peel them.

And you’re like oh,
OK, fair enough.

That can come from the
structured data as well.

So that’s pretty cool.

SUZ HINTON: That is really cool.

I didn’t even think
of those use cases.

I just always thought
about search results.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

 

 

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SEO Mythbusting 101

Wondering how to do SEO?

So are millions of other people around the world.

Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing, cheaply made articles that have a 400-word count from ‘Native English Writers’ (that also say will pass Copyscape)

No, Google wants and demands more…

So why do people care?

Well, Google is a powerhouse that demands attention.

“Google has 92.42% of the search engine market share worldwide. That breaks down to approximately 72% of the desktop market and 92% of the mobile search engine market share. The United States leads with the most users. 27% of Americans use Google.”

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-search-statistics

 

Is Google Really That Big of a Powerhouse?

While no one is exactly sure how many searches are completed on Google, it’s estimated that there are about 70,000 search queries every second.

To put this into perspective – if you are a fast reader- you probably read all the on this page so far to here in about 15 seconds.

 

Based on the above that means Google had more than 1,050,000 searches while you have ready this page.

Imagine what sort of income you could have by just getting a tiny, minuscule fraction of those people searching landing on your page.

It could mean the phone ringing non-stop with new customer inquiries, 1,000’s of orders placed on your store and millions of dollars in your bank.

 

But it is not that easy.

Today there are well over a billion websites (yes a 1 with 9 zeros after it – 1,000,000,000)

And every second the Internet grows way larger as a webpage generally has more than 1 page.

In fact, the Tilburg University in The Netherlands created a research project that estimates the number of pages available each day – currently showing over 5 billion pages.

 

The Scams

With Google, such a powerhouse, people from all around have jumped on the bandwagon.

If you have a phone, you probably have been called about getting a website or getting more people to your site.

Let alone getting emails from your website contact forms…

(we look after over 1,000 sites and know contact form spam is massive and so hard to stop not just for our internal sites but also for all our customers as well)

 

Just think with the Internet being this massive, can a person in India promise that they will get you into the top spot in Google for only $300?

Sorry, but it is not going to happen…

 

Big Business

Google is big business and they spend billions of dollars making sure their propeties stays that way. 

If it was that easy to get the top spot, why would people pay them for the priviledge?

And pay Google they do – Ending March 2019 Google’s Advertising revenue was  $30.720 billion for the year, up 15.3% from $26.642 billion a year earlier.

 

Getting Results Fast

Today the quickest way to get to the top of Google for almost any site, and to reap the enourmous benefits that come with it is to pay.

Goolge even says in their advertsing  ‘For every $1 businesses spend on Google Ads, they make an average of $2 in revenue. (source: Google)’

So as long as you have a decent offer and a great website – the profits are there even after paying Google their share.

 

The Slow Way

However some people are stil looking for hte Golden Goose – which is why Google Has created a new SEO channel

 

The first one can be viewed below, and if oyou are wantng to go fo rhte slow, over tiem old method of geting ranked – it is well worth a look..

 

 

Video Transcript:

 

If you hear about SEO what comes to your mind oh well keywords getting the content right sometimes a good h1 title that’s probably the first thing that comes to my mind but also a lot of meats and things I don’t know about [Music] people say a lot of things out there about how to make your website it stand in the top result but I don’t really know how to achieve that you know right fair enough that’s a that’s a really good question how to achieve that and I think that’s a perfect introduction into what we’re trying to do here we’re trying to like bust these myths what can I help you with what are the questions that come to your mind okay so let’s start with something simple what it’s a search engine all right so a search engine is a platform of service or program whatever you want to call it that basically goes through the internet content and tries to catalog it it works a little bit like in the library right so you probably go to a library and ask the librarian where can I find a book on topic X right that’s what you do and then normally it doesn’t take you to basically go through all the books in the library you just ya get the right books and that’s what search engines do for you we find the right content for your purpose all right but I went when he’s heard of search engines I also heard this word called crawling is that a thing that’s a thing so the way that we are doing this or search engines do this is by first going through the entire internet and we have links from one page to the other yeah so we are using that we start somewhere some URLs and then basically follow links from there on so we are basically crawling our way through the Internet one page by page more or less and then once we have these pages have found them have grabbed the content from the Internet we need to understand it we need to figure out what is this content about and what purpose does it serve so then that’s the second stage which is indexing so then we figure out so this page is about ice cream this page is about ice cream in Miami this page is about marmalade and stuff like that and then the last step is if you type something in you don’t type in I want this particular thing here you just go like I need ice cream ice cream online midian right yes you got it so we then basically look into our index and find the ones that are serving this purpose and then we try to figure out which is the one that serves these purposes perfectly or best and then we rank these higher than the others and show you the example the examples that we found from the index so how do you know which one is which results are more relevant to a given user that’s a really good question we have over 200 signals to do so so we look at things like the title the Meta Description the actual content that you’ve got on your page images links all sorts of things well right it’s a very complicated question to answer what ranks you best but yeah we look at the bunch of signals now if you could give me like you know like top three things that I should consider what would that be right so us being developers originally you probably want me to say oh I use this framework or use that framework yeah that’s not how it works you have to have really good content and that means you have content have to have content that serves a purpose for the user it’s something that users need and or one optimally they need it and want it okay like ice cream so if you’re if your content says where you are what you do how you how you help me with what I’m trying to accomplish that’s fantastic if you just have a page that says like we are a fantastic company and we have plenty of products that’s not serving a purpose so you want to make sure to serve the purpose of the people who you want to attract and get who you want to interact with your content and you want to make sure that you’re using words that I would be using if you use a very specific term for your ice cream let’s say like smooth cream 5000 or something like that I’m not I’m not gonna search for that because I don’t know about I’m just gonna go like I need ice cream it’s good to mention it somewhere so that I know if I look for that trademark I find it as well okay but if I if I’m exploring ice cream around me I don’t know what particular ice cream there is if there’s like a specific brand fantastic but that’s not what I’m looking for so speak the language that I’m using so you’re you’re saying more like a page it’s like an exactly you wouldn’t when when we to meet and you have a fantastic product or I have a fantastic four I wouldn’t go like yeah blurp master 5000 it’s fantastic and you’re like yeah it doesn’t say it does that do all right so do that do an elevator pitch and help us okay put you in contact with the right people so content is number one priority Oh could you mention another two things that are important for this yeah you’re gonna love them because they are technical so the second biggest thing is make sure that you have meta tags that describe your content so I have a Meta Description okay because that gives you the possibility to have a little snippet in the search results that let people find out which of the many results might be the ones that help them the best and have page titles that are specific to the page that you are serving so don’t have a title for everything the same title is bad if you have titles that change with the content you’re showing that is fantastic and frameworks have ways of doing that so consult the documentation but there’s definitely something something that helps with the content and the last bit is performance Herot right yeah performance is fantastic we’re talking about it constantly but we’re probably missing out on the fact that this is also good for being discovered online our so performance is not just making my website faster but it’s also making my website more visible to others correct okay because we want to make sure that the people clicking on your search was like clicking on your page yeah getting this content quickly so that’s one thing that we want to make sure as well so we’re it’s one of the many signals that we are looking at but also it just helps you use this right they get happier if I want ice cream really badly then I get the page quicker that’s fantastic yeah so if you want to look at performance I highly recommend looking into hybrid rendering or server-side rendering again because that gets the content quicker to the users usually right also you might have BOTS that don’t run JavaScript so Googlebot does that but not everyone else does it necessarily so you want to make sure to probably figure out something like dynamic rendering if you don’t want to make code changes because I understand we’re all pressed for time we have lots of bugs and and features too to fulfill and work through so if you can’t change the code dynamic rendering might be something that gets you there okay if there’s rendering shoes with your content but besides that I would say definitely look into performance optimization get the content quicker get the first content full paint in there quicker optimize your servers optimize your caching strategies make sure that your script doesn’t have to run for like 60 seconds to fetch everything that you need I know yeah so those are things that you should definitely look into and I guess performance is something that pretty much everyone in the developer community is looking at certainly yes or they should at least they should I hope that they do okay so we already discussed like all these basics around SEO and search engines and how to position my my website in the top search results now the question is why is it so important for companies to rank like like in the top results right so you’re you’re a web developer right yes your build stuff on the internet yeah do you want people to use it certainly yes certainly right so in order to make sure that people can use that they have to know about it and unless you are probably one of the really big players might not and even for the big players if they launch something new you might not know about it and you’re not looking specifically for products you’re looking for something that serves a purpose for you okay I want to know how I built this thing with a framework I want to know where to find the best ice cream and the place I am in I want to find the cutest dogs and poppers online so like I have a purpose I don’t know who serves this purpose necessarily so if you build the best ice cream PWA ever in let’s say Medellin is that how you profess so if you build the best PWA to order ice cream online in midian then I don’t I don’t know about that especially if I come as a tourist but if I type that into a search engine like order ice cream in medicine and then it goes like hey this this PWA does this trick yeah you want to be the the first or the first couple of because I’m not gonna go to page 99 and go like oh yeah this might be the perfect thing because Google and other search engines are trying to like figure out what is the best for this purpose and then show me those up front and then I might pick from those because normally they’re pretty good I think that covers have all the questions I have fantastic so you feel like ready to build that certainly excellent that is so cool thank you so much for being here thank you my guests and I hope that this this helps other developers as well and developers and se owes can be friends I think I think so yeah I think so thank you Oh are we still on please stay tuned for another episode of SEO myth busting next time with soos Hinton we’ll talk about what is Googlebot so come back again and watch what happens

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Mobile Beats TV For The First Time

This year marks the first time that Americans will spend more time staring down at their phones and tablets than they will watching television. – View the article here

No matter where you go, you will see someone on their mobile device – most people even sleep wit htheir phone beside their bed.

It is no wonder mobile is now the defacto way most people will view your site. 

If you have not done so already – Now is the time to make sure your site is mobile optimized!

Did you know we can help re-create your site and make it stand out from the rest of the crowd?

For a no-obligation free quote just get in touch with us now

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The Dawn Of Tomorrow

As humans, we naturally dream and think about the future, what will it be like? Where will we be? Will we get that Ferrari, and the partner we most want? Will we achieve all those dreams that we had when we were younger and planned out our future? As Entrepreneurs, as Internet Marketers, we have a plan in place, and that plan is all about getting to our future, what was your reason for starting your business? Why did you become an Internet Marketer? Was it to earn some extra money? Did you want to be your own boss? Maybe you needed something that allowed you to work your own hours rather than the nine to five rat -race.

Whatever your reason you started down this path and put together a plan for your future. If you are just starting out, you may be thinking about your immediate goals, what do you need to achieve in the short term for this to be a viable career? If you are an old hand, with many campaigns and sales behind you, then what are your goals now? How do they compare with what you wanted to achieve when you started out?

Each day is a step into the future, it brings new challenges, new products, new ways of selling. Ten years ago, who knew that nearly every person in the developed and developing countries would have what amounts to a new super computer in their pockets. Yes, you heard that right, a super computer, a modern smartphone has more computing power than all the computing power for all the Apollo space missions combined, and on all those devices is the ability to send and receive messages and browse the internet twenty -four hours a day, seven days a week. You can be marketing and selling your products even when you are asleep, to anyone, anywhere, at any moment.

That’s the future we live in right now, what new advancements might come with the following dawn who can even guess. The one thing we know is that the future is always in motion. You can make plans for where you want to be, but make sure those plans can move and evolve just like the future does. Don’t think about the financial goals you want to reach, instead think about the life goals and experiences you want to achieve, and make your business work to support them. As important as our work and careers are to us they are not the primary reason for a human to be alive.

Many of the most successful businesspeople on the planet will say the first thing you must have to be successful is a strong work ethic above all else, success comes with hard work. But here is the question to ask yourself as you plan your own tomorrow, when the dawn breaks do you want a lot of zeros in a computerised bank, or do you want a life full of experiences and happiness? Work to enrich your life, not to define it. Don’t plan for a future that is so far away that it may not even exist when you finally get there, plan and work for the experiences and joys you can have along the way too.

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Facebook Blueprint

How Facebook Blueprint Can Help You Make Money With any FB Advertisement

Facebook has changed its advertising offerings over the years. Like many companies who make the majority of their income from advertising revenue, Facebook is always trying to find that perfect mix of marketing options that suit the individuals and businesses which want to advertise on FB, while also making a minimally negative impact on its users.

If its users were blasted with advertisements everywhere, Facebook would make a lot of money in the beginning, but then people would stop visiting that social media giant. On the other hand, if they dramatically limited the number of advertisements they allowed, marketers would go elsewhere with their ad dollars. This means Facebook is constantly changing the ways you can advertise on the world’s largest virtual meeting place.

This can cause some confusion for marketers who would like to cash in on the 2+ billion people who regularly use Facebook. Because of the constantly changing face of FB ads, it is tough for some marketers to keep up.

Enter Facebook Blueprint

Facebook Blueprint is a digital learning application created to educate would-be marketers on the best practices for advertising on the FB network. Facebook purchased Instagram a few years ago, so Facebook Blueprint is also a good way for you to improve your Instagram advertising chops. Instead of just providing a marketing guide like other social media networks that have advertising capabilities, Facebook Blueprint offers a course through which you can earn your certification as an “in the know” FB ads expert.
Blueprint eLearning

Blueprint eLearning is the first of the three levels of the Facebook Blueprint program. You learn what to do and what not to do to get quickly approved by FB for all your advertisements. Facebook advertisers can work very hard on marketing messages without getting them approved. This step of the Facebook ads education process keeps that from happening. This is the entry level of Facebook Blueprint access.

Blueprint Certification

For a deeper understanding of the many ways you can advertise on Facebook, you can certify your education. For people who enjoy more of a school-based education process, Blueprint Certification is perfect. There are two exams which you must pass to earn certification, and when you do, you will be well-equipped to understand the current FB ad offerings. Facebook promises to update this and other levels Blueprint teaching is the ads experience changes.

Blueprint Live

Some people learn better by interacting live with a trainer or educator. This is the format offered by Blueprint Live, an in-person training program which teaches the ins and outs of advertising and marketing on Instagram and Facebook.

If you would like to learn more, Facebook Blueprint can be found by googling “Facebook Blueprint e-learning,” or by going to the following URL:

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1716267285362419

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What Are the Different Ways to Advertise on Facebook?

Choosing From the 10 Facebook Ad Objectives – What Are the Different Ways to Advertise on Facebook?

Have you ever advertised on Facebook?

If so, you had to choose from the many options for marketing on the world’s largest social media website.

Do you want your ads showing up on news feeds? Should you set a daily or monthly budget?

What demographics should you target?

There are plenty of choices you need to make if you want to get your marketing message in front of the more than 2 billion people who regularly use Facebook.

Whether you decide to boost a post, advertise with video or keep your marketing efforts restricted to your business page, there are currently 10 different ad objectives Facebook offers.

Facebook asks you to reverse your traditional marketing mindset by thinking about your intended result first and then working backward towards the type of ad you are going to create. In early 2018, here are the 10 different objectives you can try to accomplish by advertising on Facebook (listed alphabetically).

Application Installs – Choose this option if you are trying to get prospects to download one of your business apps. This option allows you to choose between desktop or mobile applications.

Brand Awareness – This is a good option if your goal is to introduce your business to the world, and boost the number of people who understand what it is your business does.

Conversions – If you want someone to click on a link, purchase a product, or join your email list on your website, converting someone from tire-kicker to action-taker, choose Conversions in the Facebook ad objectives menu.

Engagement – This is the option you should choose if you want to get the FB world to like, share, or comment on a post or page.

Lead generation – If you are trying to turn prospects into eventual customers, you have to fill your sales funnel with leads.

Reach – This option exposes your marketing message to as many targeted prospects as possible.

Product catalog sales – This is a relatively new option, which allows you to build and display a catalog of your products and services.

Store visits – If you run a brick-and-mortar business, getting people in your front door is crucial to your success. This is the Facebook advertising option that allows you to do that.

Traffic – For a virtual business, traffic is everything. Choose this ad objective when you want to direct traffic to a specific webpage.

Video views – This objective is self-explanatory. It helps boost the number of views your video receives.

As the initial step for advertising on Facebook, you must choose from one of the 10 options just listed. These options are updated from time to time, and can always be accessed from the Facebook Ads Manager.

Once you decide on the business objective or goal you are trying to achieve, you are then taken through a simple to follow, step-by-step process that allows you to create your ad, set your budget, and start advertising.

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The Quickest Way to Advertise on Facebook – Boosting Facebook Posts

If you are on Facebook, you are certainly not alone. More than 2 billion Facebook users log in on a monthly basis. That means nearly 30% of the world’s population is frequently checking in on FB. No doubt in the past, while you were sharing funny-cat, crazy-baby, or “look what I am eating” pictures and videos on Facebook, you ran into a few advertisements.

Advertising is the way Facebook makes money. The world’s largest virtual social network does not charge for membership. It is free to join Facebook and engage with its many billions of members. You can create or join Facebook Groups, post whatever is on your mind as long as it is not inflammatory or hateful, and find others that enjoy the same interests. Because all of those socializing options are free, Facebook has to make money somehow, and it is through its advertising platform.

If you would like to take your marketing shot at the global Facebook audience, the quickest way to do so is to Boost a Post.

If you dive into the Facebook Ads Manager, you can feel a little overwhelmed.  (https://www.facebook.com/adsmanager)

There is a 4-step process you need to follow for any ad campaign, and each of those 4 steps involves multiple choices and selections. This ends up creating thousands upon thousands of Facebook advertising permutations. If you would like to get started quickly by sharing your marketing message on Facebook while you learn the intricacies of the Facebook Ads Manager, boosting a post is the way to go.

How to Boost a Post

Consider this the “bare-bones” option for advertising on Facebook. It is such a quick and simple process, you may want to keep an eye on your budget when you begin boosting posts. In just a couple of minutes, a
person entirely unfamiliar with Facebook advertising can select a post, attach a budget, and market on FB with only a few clicks.

Perhaps you are launching an event at your brick-and-mortar business. You have slashed prices, you are launching a new product line, your business is just entering its most important season, and you want to start that season with a bang. Consider promoting your event by boosting a post. This simple Facebook advertising process can also be used if you are trying to build an email list, develop leads for your business, or increase the number of likes or shares your business page receives.

The first thing you want to do is a locate a post you want to promote, or create a new post. If you are choosing from previous posts, find one that has driven a lot of engagement. Once you have a post you want to promote, look right below the post. You will see a blue button which says Boost Post.

Click on that button and you will be taken to options for setting up your ad. A new option added in late 2017 allows you to choose an objective. Click the blue highlighted Change option to see all available objectives. This allows you to use your promoted post to reach a very specific business goal. You can then add a call to action that links to FB Messenger or your website, and you can select the age range, location, and gender of your audience.

The final step is to choose a budget.

When you select a budget, you will instantly see an approximation of how many people you will reach with that budget, according to the age, location, and gender filters you have set. Click the Boost button to begin your ad. One really neat feature with the post-boosting option is to save previous audiences for use later. Once you go through the process a few
times, you can find yourself promoting posts in under a minute, with this quickest and probably simplest of all the Facebook advertising options.

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The Power of Pain

Let’s talk about human nature for a second. If I were to offer you a succulent, moist, still warm-from-the-oven piece of triple chocolate cake…

…while simultaneously slamming my heel into your toes…

…which one would you notice?

Which one would you react to?

And which one would you still be thinking about tomorrow?

People will spend an enormous amount of time, money and energy to avoid pain. They’ll avoid confrontation with bosses, neighbors, spouses and kids to avoid emotional pain. They’ll take drugs to suppress physical pain.

Your job as a successful marketer – whether you like it or not – is to use this pain to help them find a solution.

Some might call this exploitation – digging around in the pain and agitating it to motivate people to take action. You’re making the pain worse before you finally prescribe the cure.

But it’s the pain that makes people take action. And if you can help people, then it’s your job to do it. And to help people, you’ve got to use the best method possible to motivate them to take action – which is aggravating the pain and making them feel it until they cry ‘uncle.’

I know what you’re thinking – you won’t make their pain worse to sell them the solution. Instead, you’ll motivate them with a positive picture of what their life will be like once they have the solution. Well, you’re half right. Understand this – Humans will do far more to avoid pain than to receive reward. They’ll run as fast as they can away from the stick, but they’ll creep up on the carrot and many times never even reach it.

Most people cannot clearly describe what they want, which is why they never get it. But they can tell you exactly what they don’t want. By rubbing their noses in what they’re trying to avoid, you momentarily make the pain worse until it’s unbearable. They want to take action now. They NEED to take action NOW.

And then you motivate them with the positive picture of all the benefits they’ll receive from doing this thing you want them to do. The niche doesn’t matter, either. Whether you’re selling software, information, washers and dryers or stocks and bonds, agitate the problem, then offer the solution.

Examples:

Software
– how much work are they having to do, and how much business are they missing because they don’t have your automated solution?

They’ve already wasted tons of time and lost a fortune. Their competitors are ahead of them, and soon their business will be on the scrap heap.

Unless… unless they grab your software now, because then they can get x benefit and y benefit and z benefit, etc.

Health Information
– they’re overweight, tired, catching colds and at risk for serious disease. From here, it only gets worse
– much worse. Sick, in pain, bed ridden, in the hospital, heart attacks and chemo and drugs and …

but wait. They can turn their health around, starting right now.

Washers and dryers

– think how much extra they’ve already paid in water bills because they don’t have energy efficient models.

Plus, the wear and tear to their clothes from inferior washers and overheating dryers, their shoddy appearance wearing these clothes, making a lousy first impression at work because of how bad their clothes look. But you can solve it all today…

Investments
– they’ve already lost a fortune by not using your services. Just look at the returns your clients have been getting, look at how much money they started with versus what they have today.

If only they had started with you sooner, all the time and money lost. But right now you have perhaps your best investment advice yet, but it’s a super hot market and timing is critical…

Okay, you get the idea. No matter what you’re selling, you can agitate the problem and then offer the solution.

Remember, in movies the hero doesn’t arrive to save the day until things look completely bleak and desperate and the cause is all but lost. Effective marketing is no different.

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Big Fish, Small Pond

Your target market must be small enough that the resources you’re able to commit will have a big impact.

Imagine carrying the heaviest rock you can hold and dropping it into a small pond. The splash would be huge, loud and noticed by anyone around, and the ripples would cover the entire surface.

Now imagine dropping that same rock into the middle of the ocean. No one would even notice. Imagine dropping a rock 100 times that size in the middle of the ocean. Again, no one would notice a thing.

The rock, of course, is your resources.

When new marketers come to me looking for advice, I ask them who their target market is. Nine times out of ten, it’s, “Everyone who wants to ___.” It might be everyone who needs to lose weight, make money or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Their market is too big and they’ll never get noticed.

But if they target teachers who want to make extra money online, or nurses, or fast food workers, they’ll probably make a killing.

Still not convinced? Think of the pond versus the ocean, and the rock as being your marketing. How much marketing will you have to do to get noticed in the ocean? You’ll need the resources of a Coca-cola to do it.

Now imagine getting noticed in the pond. Heck, if you just stand up and say, “I’ll teach everyone in the pond how to lose 10 pounds this month, or how to make $1,000 a month online,” you’ll get noticed right away.

When someone describes their market too broadly, I know they’re going to fail. But when they know exactly who their audience is and how they’re going to reach them, I know they’ll do fine