How to Use Facebook Power Editor: A Detailed Guide

By Jon Loomer
Published August 6, 2013

Are you looking for a better way to manage your Facebook ads?

Do you want access to new Facebook advertising features as soon as they’re available?

Facebook offers a powerful and often overlooked way for marketers to do amazing things with ads.

In this article I’ll show you what Power Editor is, explore its benefits and show you how you can create campaigns using Power Editor.

The most powerful way to target your ideal audience on Facebook is with Facebook ads.

But clicking the “Boost Post” button and using the self-serve ad tool only scratches the surface. If you want to thrive and direct profits with your Facebook ads, you need to use Power Editor.

Use Power Editor to have full control over your Facebook advertising.

Power Editor is a free browser plugin created by Facebook that lets you bulk-edit your ads. It was initially created as a Chrome plugin. Although it does sporadically work in other browsers, you’ll likely want to use the Chrome browser when working with Power Editor.

Go to Facebook.com/powereditor to test your browser or install the plugin.

But Power Editor is much more than just a bulk ad editor. It has many advantages over Facebook’s self-serve ad tool used by the vast majority of Facebook advertisers.

Here are the benefits of using Power Editor for your Facebook ads.

Partner Categories is a feature available within Power Editor.

When Facebook rolls out new advanced features, they’re sent first to the Facebook ads API (which goes to third-party tools) and Power Editor. As a result, marketers using Power Editor tend to get these features well before those who use the self-serve ad tool exclusively.

Here are some examples of features you can currently find in Power Editor, but not in the self-serve ad tool:

Partner Categories: Facebook has partnered with three data-mining companies (Axciom, Datalogix and Epsilon) that collect mounds of data on users related to purchase history and lifestyle. Facebook uses this data to let advertisers do some powerful ad targeting with more than 500 categories.

Here’s a sampling of the targeting you can do with the help of Partner Categories:

Household size of 6 (8,842,800 users)Upscale department store credit card user (34,618,400 users)Home office supply purchases (2,638,300 users)Aftermarket vehicle purchase over 48 months ago (11,952,800 users)Baby food and products buyers (10,497,100 users)Casino vacations (4,242,000 users)Dog owner (12,643,500 users)Fitness buyers—runners (5,950,600 users)Teacher/educator (223,000 users)Donate to veteran causes (7,016,400 users)

While Precise Interest and Broad Category targeting are dependent on users keeping their profiles updated, Partner Category targeting is based on a user’s actual buying history and completion of surveys.

Lookalike Audiences: Facebook’s recent rollout of Custom Audiences to the self-serve ad tool lets advertisers upload their customer lists into Facebook to target those users with ads.

Power Editor’s Lookalike Audiences builds a similar list of Facebook users based on your customer list.

Create an audience you can target with ads similar to your offline customer list.

This can be useful for advertisers with small customer lists that are quickly exhausted. Facebook will review your customer list and find either the top 1% (focused on similarity) or 5% (focused on reach) of users similar to those customers whom you can then target with advertising.

Saved Audiences (or Saved Target Groups): A successful Facebook ad takes time to create because you enter all of the relevant targeting parameters. This could include the following:

Countries/States/CitiesGenderPrecise InterestsBroad CategoriesPartner CategoriesConnections (Fans, Not Fans, Friends of Fans)Custom Audiences/Excluded AudiencesRelationships and Relationship InterestsLanguagesEducationWorkplaces

That’s a lot of information and it’s a pain to re-enter this every time you create a new ad within the self-serve ad tool.

Within Power Editor, all you need to do is create a Saved Audience (also known as a Saved Target Group). Once you create a Saved Audience, you save a lot of time in the ad-creation process.

Create a Saved Audience to save time!

While on the Audience tab, simply select your Saved Audience and Facebook will automatically prefill all of the necessary fields for you (more on this when we step through creating ads later).

Domain Sponsored Stories: This is a powerful tool that not nearly enough advertisers know about. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your website.

Whenever a user shares a link to your website, a story is created. If you set up a Domain Sponsored Story, Facebook will then turn that share into an ad.

Create Domain Sponsored Stories to leverage sharing from your website.

This is not connected in any way to your Facebook Page. The shining star of the ad is your friend and the link to your website. As a result, it’s more effective than a Page Post Sponsored Story at driving traffic to your website.

Conversion Specs: You’ll read more about this in a bit, but Conversion Specs allow you to get very granular within your ad bidding. You can optimize for specific actions like link clicks, video plays or post stories instead of relying on Facebook default optimization.

Others: This is constantly evolving. At one point, features like Conversion Tracking and Custom Audiences were available within Power Editor, but not the self-serve ad tool. If you want to get the cool features first, you need to use Power Editor!

Aside from new features, another reason to use Power Editor over the self-serve ad tool is the control you gain over placement of your ads.

Power Editor provides full control over the placement of your Facebook ads.

Within Power Editor, you can target the appearance of your ads as follows:

All PlacementsDesktop Only (Right-hand column and news feed)All News Feed (desktop and mobile)Desktop News Feed OnlyMobile News Feed Only

Let’s take it a step further. Say you want to target mobile devices, but only particular mobile devices. This can be helpful when promoting an iPhone app, for example.

Target specific mobile devices with Power Editor.

You have the ability to target specific devices (feature phones only, Android phones only or iOS devices only) and even drill down into the models of those phones and OS versions.

If you use the new Facebook ads reports, you can quickly determine which placements are providing the best bang for your buck so you can optimize accordingly.

Here’s more about the ability to use a feature within Power Editor that I mentioned earlier called Conversion Specs. This Conversion Specs feature is not available in the self-serve ad tool. You need the Power Editor to use it. Let’s dig into what that means.

Note that within Facebook’s self-serve ad tool, you can only bid based on Optimized CPM (optimized for a specific action), CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions), CPC (cost per click) and Optimized CPC (optimized for clicks).

Within Power Editor, you can do the following:

CPC (cost per click)CPM (cost per thousand impressions)Optimized CPM (optimized for a specific action)

In addition, within this Optimized CPM, you can choose from using default bids or manually set up bids to optimize for any of the following:

This is where it really gets fun. You can use either the default conversion specs or manually set up conversion specs.

You see, by default your ad is optimized for getting more Page likes if that’s your goal or for getting more engagement if you’re promoting a post.

But what if you want to optimize for something else? In the image below is an example of an ad that’s automatically optimized for engagement.

Optimize for specific actions by manually setting up Conversion Specs in Power Editor.

As you can see, the action type is “post_engagement.” You can edit this to optimize for another type of action.

Here are examples of codes you can enter to optimize for something other than general post engagement:

comment (post comments)like (post likes)link_click (clicks on links leading to an external website)photo_view (views of post photo)post (post shares)post_engagement (general post engagement including any clicks)post_story (post stories including likes, comments and shares)receive_offer (offer claim)video_play (plays of your post video)

The Bulk Editing feature is a quick and easy way to shave off a few minutes from managing your ads.

Let’s say you create a campaign with five ads in it. All of those ads include the United States and Canada as your target countries. After looking through your results, you decide to target only the United States.

You could go into each ad individually and change your targeting or use Power Editor to highlight each ad and change one. That change will apply to all five ads.

Quickly edit multiple ads at once within Power Editor.

You can also quickly duplicate a campaign and all of the ads within it by clicking the “Duplicate” button while viewing the campaign.

Duplicate a campaign and all of its ads with Power Editor.

Or you can duplicate an individual ad by clicking the “Duplicate” button while viewing the ad.

Save time by duplicating an ad within Power Editor.

First, make sure you click the “Download” button at the top right before you get started. This updates Power Editor on all recent activity you’ve had on Facebook and includes creating ads elsewhere, creating posts that can be promoted or creating tabs that could serve as a destination.

Make sure to click “Download” before each session using Power Editor.

Now go ahead and highlight either “Recent Campaigns” or “Active Campaigns” on the left.

Highlight “Recent Campaigns” on the left within Power Editor.

Then click the “Create Campaign” button at the top.

Click “Campaigns” and then “Create Campaign” to create a campaign in Power Editor.

Now select this new campaign on the left and simply fill in a few minor details.

Create a Facebook ad campaign within Power Editor.Campaign Name: Name your campaign something descriptive to make it easy to pick out later.Budget: Set a daily or lifetime budget. This is the maximum that Facebook will bill you in a day or from start to finish.Start/End: Set a start and end date and time. You can choose to run continuously without an end date if you choose.Labels: This is a way to help organize your campaign into groups. Feel free to add a label here to help keep similar campaigns together.

That’s it! Creating a campaign is pretty dang easy.

Here’s how to create your ad in Power Editor. First, make sure that your new campaign is selected on the left. Then click “Ads” at the top and “Create Ad.”

Highlight your campaign, click “Ads” and then “Create Ad” to create a new ad in Power Editor.

Your new ad is then broken up into three main sections and one subsection:

Creative & PlacementsAudience (including Advanced Options)Pricing & Status

The Creative & Placements view will look like this:

The Creative & Placements view when creating a Facebook ad within Power Editor.

Here, you’ll need to provide the following:

Ad Name (make it descriptive based on purpose, placement, bidding, etc.)Ad Type (Ad, Sponsored Story, Mobile Only Ad, Video Ad)Destination (Facebook Page)Page Post (if applicable)URL Tags (for tracking traffic to your website from ads)Conversion Tracking (for offsite conversions)PlacementMobile Devices

After reading this article on Power Editor, make sure you also experiment with different types of ads—particularly those classified as “Ad” and “Sponsored Story.”

The Audience view looks like this:

The Audience view when creating a Facebook ad within Power Editor.

This is where you’ll do the bulk of your targeting by defining:

Audiences (select a Saved Audience to quickly fill in targeting details)Country, State, City or Zip CodeAge RangeGenderPrecise Interests (target by interests, activities, education, job titles or groups listed on timelines)Partner Categories (target based on buying histories and lifestyles)Broad Categories (target people who include information in their timelines related to these words or phrases)Connections (target users connected to your Page, not connected to your Page or who have friends connected to your Page)

The Advanced Options view looks like this:

The Advanced Options view when creating a Facebook ad within Power Editor.

This is a continuation of the Audiences view. Target users based on the following:

Custom Audiences (target users on your customer list)Excluded Audiences (exclude users on your customer list)Interested In (relationship interests)RelationshipsLanguagesEducationWorkplaces

It’s important to target languages here so that you don’t waste your money on people who can’t read your ad.

When you select one of the Education options, you can pick the precise school, graduation year and areas of study to target.

The Pricing & Status view looks like this:

Here’s the pricing and status view.

We already covered much of this under the Section #3: Optimize Your Bidding (above). But this is where you can really refine with your bidding.

CPC (cost per click)CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions)Optimized CPM (optimized for a specific action)

I recommend split testing with each of these three options and that you consider manually assigning bids for a specific action to see what’s most efficient.

Make sure that you experiment with Conversion Specs to optimize your ad for the action that leads to success!

Don’t forget to click “Upload”!

When you’re finished creating your campaign, make sure to click the “Upload” button at the upper right-hand side.

Don’t forget to click “Upload” when you’re done creating or editing your Facebook ads in Power Editor!

Power Editor Results

Getting results with Facebook ads has a lot to do with whether you’re properly using all of the best tools available to you. Create your ads in Power Editor and you’ll get great results.

What do you think? Do you use Power Editor? What results are you seeing with Facebook ads? Let me know in the comments below!

View the original article here

How Social Brands Manage Their Customer Care [Infographic]

Some brands have taken their traditional customer care approach to successfully adapt it to social media.

In this Infographic, Social Bakers shares the results of its last survey so we can see what these companies have in common.

There are some very interesting points here, for example:

Companies are no longer limiting their efforts to Twitter, they’re conducting customer care on multiple channelsThey’re not outsourcing their customer care department24% already have internal teams of 4 to 10 peopleThe customer care department is turning the fastest responses

So you are probably a small business owner, right? What can you take from the brands that are successfully using social media to ensure customer satisfaction? What can you apply in your business?

Infographic courtesy of SocialBakers.

About Francisco Rosales
I’m the author of SocialMouths. I also help entrepreneurs and small businesses turn their vanilla “web presence” into a profit powerhouse using techniques on social media, content and email marketing to generate traffic and convert to leads and sales. Caffeine addict and a hopeless fan of Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Bazinga! Learn more

Follow me on Twitter ·

View the original article here

This is How You Share Content in Social Media

If you truly want to maximize your reach on Facebook and Google+ when you share content, look no further than our client, Angie’s List. Many folks (like us) push our content to social media utilizing a host of publishing applications like Hootsuite or Buffer.

The problem is that our articles are seen on Facebook and Google+ with minimal reach. Not too many shares, not too much dialog. We’re using a a third party to publish them so we know that Edgerank is already driving our visibility down. The posted articles look like this: This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Now take a look at Angie’s List and how they publish their articles: This slideshow requires JavaScript.

23 Shares, 32 Likes, and 9 comments on the topic, How to Choose the Right Shingle Color! Folks… that’s not exactly some amazingly fascinating topic the world was waiting on, was it?

The difference between our sharing method and theirs is that they provide a very nice photo and upload it with a short link to their article. This is a manual process and requires the additional time of developing the graphic and uploading it manually… but it’s getting hundreds, if not thousands more people seeing the article by doing so.

The images are displayed at the full width of the stream – a huge difference compared to the small thumbnail accompanying other articles. As folks are scrolling through their streams on Facebook and Google+, they breeze by the text, may catch one or two article thumbnails, but their eyes can’t miss these large images! Google+ publishes them at almost full browser width!

You may want to think about developing some kind of template in Illustrator of Photoshop to easily build out these images to post… they really do work!

View the original article here

My Analytics: Google Analytics for iPhone

KISSmetrics have released a new FREE iPhone application called My Analytics. It’s the fastest way to see how your Google Analytics metrics are doing when you’re away from your desk.

Earlier this year, the folks at KISSmetrics were looking for a decent Google Analytics app to help them keep tabs on their own data. And they couldn’t find one. Either the mobile apps were WAY too basic and wouldn’t let you do any comparisons, or they tried to do WAY too much and weren’t easy to use.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

My Analytics shows your Google Analytics data when you’re on the go, in a meeting, or need an quick update.

With My Analytics, you can compare today’s data with yesterday, the same day last week, and the same day two weeks ago. You can also compare yesterday’s data with previous weeks or this week’s data to previous weeks.

My Analytics gives you the data that you need right away. You’ll get quick access to your Visits, Unique Visitors, Page views, Goals, Ecommerce Transactions and Ecommerce Revenue.

View the original article here

The Effect Of Social Media On Commerce [Infographic]

At the end of the day, Social Media Marketing means absolutely nothing if it doesn’t affect commerce.

This infographic from Fedelta starts with the presentation of the always impressive stats for social networks usage. You know, 100k Tweets are sent every minute, there are 152 million blogs online, 3 billion hours of YouTube are watched every month, etc. But lets get passed that and look at the more interesting data, where updates and videos and all that other stuff actually affects the sales department.

Here are some the interesting points you should pay attention to:

Purchase influence vs Direct sales

When we talk about how Social media affects commerce, it doesn’t mean sales are made over Facebook, most of time it means how the social web influences purchase decisions.

The salesclerk is dead

People trust product information from online sources and their own friends online over retail employees. I mean, just last week one of the employees at the AT&T store couldn’t answer my wife an iPhone question on his own and had to consult with his manager. This is only their best seller product…

Social environments vs E-commerce

It’s obvious, you don’t like to see the sales rep walking towards you in slow motion through the car dealer lot when you’re shopping for your new vehicle. People don’t like being pushed into a product but, they like getting friends opinions.

There are some pretty big numbers here in this infographic:

92% shoppers have more confidence in online information than whatever the salesclerk has to say50% of mobile searches lead to sales81% love to see products being used in video reviews75% said user-generated videos reviewing a product have affected a purchasing decision55% share purchases on social networks

Now, the homework is yours: How are you using social media to assist purchases in your business?

Infographic courtesy of Fedelta.

About Francisco Rosales
I’m the author of SocialMouths. I also help entrepreneurs and small businesses turn their vanilla “web presence” into a profit powerhouse using techniques on social media, content and email marketing to generate traffic and convert to leads and sales. Caffeine addict and a hopeless fan of Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Bazinga! Learn more

Follow me on Twitter ·

View the original article here

Infographic: The Case for Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is changing not only how people communicate with each other, but how they live, work and shop.

As you may already know, the growth of mobile device use has spread like wildfire in recent years. Experts believe the number of mobile devices will reach 7.3 billion by 2014, confirming there’s a mobile revolution underway. For marketers, it’s fight or flight: you either embrace mobility and adapt your online strategy to fit a multi-screen world, or surrender your weapons and suffer a slow, but sure demise.

According to Mashable, 2013 is “the year of responsive website design,” further driving the need for websites and apps to be optimized for any and all screen sizes. With 90% of people using multiple screens sequentially, and 67% of shoppers starting on one device and completing their purchase on another, the need for a fluid experience is vital.

Here’s a full look at the data via Get Satisfaction:

View the original article here

How to Target Only Your Customers With Facebook

By Jon Loomer
Published July 15, 2013

What if you could reach your existing customers while they’re on Facebook?

Does the idea of displaying a Facebook ad only to your prospects list sound interesting?

This could give your marketing a boost and help build your brand’s image on Facebook.

In this post, I’ll show you two ways to use Facebook’s Custom Audiences to connect with your customers and prospects on Facebook.

And I’ll also show you how to create and use your first custom audience.

How do you build your brand’s image on Facebook?

Your business undoubtedly has a database of customers. You may be using that database to keep email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs and app user IDs.

You can target the customers on these lists with your Facebook advertising, whether they are your current fans or not.

Instead of agonizing over demographics, precise interests and Partner Category targeting in an effort to reach your ideal audience, all you need to do is upload your customer list to Facebook. Facebook then matches up email addresses, for example, with the email addresses of users on Facebook.

Not all of the email addresses you collect are directly related to an email address of a Facebook user. Facebook tends to match up between 30-50% (sometimes more, sometimes less), depending on the quality of your list.

Once this list is generated in Facebook, you have a Custom Audience you can use in your advertising.

I know this all sounds diabolical and mysterious, but it’s not. Privacy is not breached.

Here’s how Facebook explains the process:

The list will be hashed before being sent to Facebook. The system will match the encrypted data against Facebook’s active users, and build a custom audience in your account with everyone that matches your list.

Hashing and encryption are two ways of securing information. Encryption lets you later recover the original text by decrypting it. Hashing summarizes text into a short fingerprint that can’t be decrypted.

With just a hashed fingerprint, there’s no way to know exactly which text was summarized even though any given text always produces the same fingerprint.

…Facebook is able to find your ideal audiences for you without either company’s data leaving its respective servers.

It’s important to remember that an advertiser may already have your email address. If you are a Facebook user, Facebook already has your email address. Because the data that is sent to Facebook is hashed and encrypted, the email address itself never changes hands.

You own a list of email addresses of your current customers. So how can you make that list work for you with Custom Audiences?

1. Bring in new fans.

Create an ad that’s targeted at current customers on your email list who aren’t currently Facebook fans to get them to like your Page. Craft your messaging appropriately, knowing this audience is already familiar with your brand.

When you direct your message to a custom audience, the success rate tends to be higher and cost per new page like much lower when compared to relying entirely on precise interests and other targeting methods.

Do you use Facebook ads to attract new fans?

2. Target segmented customers.

If you segment your email lists according to customers who have made specific purchases, you can find great success with Custom Audiences.

Let’s say that you have a list of customers who purchased Widget 1.0. You launch version 2.0. You can craft a Facebook ad targeted at the people who purchased Widget 1.0, alerting them of the update.

Facebook advertising can be enormously effective when targeting prior customers through the use of Custom Audiences.

The beauty of this approach is that your target user doesn’t need to be a Facebook fan for it to work. These are people who already have an established level of trust with your brand. They have purchased your product. They are much more likely than the typical user to click through and buy.

Have you been sold on using Custom Audiences? Great! Let’s create your first Custom Audience on Facebook.

You can’t currently create Custom Audiences within the self-serve ad tool, although you can select ones that have already been created. You’ll need to use Power Editor to create them.

Power Editor is a bulk ad editing tool created by Facebook. It’s a browser plugin that currently works with most browsers. Simply go to Facebook Power Editor to get started.

It’s likely that this functionality will eventually be rolled out to the self-serve ad tool, but you should get into the habit of using Power Editor. You have much more control over targeting, placement and bidding, and it’s where the new features are rolled out first.

On the left-hand side of Power Editor, click Audiences.

Click Audiences in Power Editor.

Next, click Create Audience and select Custom Audience.

Create your Custom Audience in Power Editor.

Now name your list, enter a description, choose the type of data (emails, UIDs, phone numbers or app user IDs) and upload the file.

Upload your customer list into Power Editor.

The file will need to be in CSV or TXT format. Make sure that the data is in one column, and you should remove the header row. Then click Create.

If the upload is successful, you’ll get the following message:

Did you get this message? Your Custom Audience has been created!

If you’re getting errors, take a look at your data to make sure all data is valid. For example, all email addresses need to be in the typical [name]@[domain] format. If not, Power Editor will return errors.

Be patient! Now you need to do as Facebook says and wait up to an hour (or more) for your audience to be ready.

Until it’s ready, the status will be listed as “Waiting.” When it’s ready, status will be listed as—you guessed it—“Ready.”

You’ll need to wait up to an hour for your Custom Audience to be ready.

Since not every email address will match up to a Facebook user, be prepared for the number of users in your Custom Audience to be lower than the number of users in your email list.

Okay, now your Custom Audience is ready. It’s time to put it to use!

In Power Editor:

When you create your ad, click on Advanced Options under Audience.

Click Advanced Options when creating an ad in Power Editor.

Then, enter the name of your audience within the Custom Audience field.

Enter the name of the Custom Audience you want to target with your ad.

If your audience is available, Facebook will begin prefilling the rest of the name as you are typing.

Also notice that there is an Excluded Audiences field. This can be handy if you want to exclude a segmented list from seeing your ad. For example, when promoting a product, you could exclude users who have already purchased it.

In the Self-Serve Ad Tool:

You know that I’d prefer you use Power Editor. But if you insist on using the self-serve ad tool, here’s how you’d target your Custom Audience within an ad there.

While creating your ad, there is a Choose Your Audience section that allows you to narrow down your targeting by things like location, age, gender and interests. Also in that group is Custom Audiences.

Simply check the boxes associated with the Custom Audience(s) you want to use.

Select the audiences you want to target with your ad in the self-serve ad tool.

If you want to take this a step further, you can have Facebook generate an audience that is similar to the users within your Custom Audience. This is particularly useful if you don’t have a large customer list and you want to expand your targeting to reach a new but similar audience.

First, click Audiences on the left-hand side of Power Editor, like you did before when you were creating your Custom Audience.

Click Audiences in Power Editor.

Then select the Custom Audience you created earlier and click Create Similar Audience.

Select the Custom Audience you want to expand and click Create Similar Audience.

You will then have the option to create a lookalike audience based on Similarity or Reach.

Choose one country and create a lookalike audience based on Similarity or Greater Reach.

If you choose Similarity, Facebook will match up the users within your Custom Audience to the top 1% of users on Facebook most similar to those users. If you choose Greater Reach, Facebook will match up the top 5% of users.

Note that you will be able to create a lookalike audience for one country at a time. When you’re done, click Create.

As was the case before, you will now need to wait for Facebook to generate this new list. While waiting, the size will show “—” and the status will be “Waiting.”

Be patient while Facebook generates your lookalike audience.

The name of the lookalike audience is auto-generated, but you can edit it or add a description for reference later.

Now you can use this audience in the same way you would your Custom Audience you created before.

Custom Audience Results

I’ve had great success targeting my email list with Facebook ads, both to add new fans and send interested users to my blog posts or products. My success rate here is multiplied over standard Facebook ad targeting.

What do you think? Have you tried Custom Audiences? What results are you seeing? Let me know in the comments below!

About the Author, Jon Loomer

Jon Loomer’s blog was named to Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013. Follow him for advanced topics focused on Facebook advertising and metrics. Other posts by Jon Loomer »

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3 Business Reasons to Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium

By Melonie Dodaro
Published July 2, 2013

Do you have a free LinkedIn account?

Are you wondering if you should upgrade to a paid account?

LinkedIn is known for providing an amazing connection and networking service, with many of its best and most useful tools available for free.

So why should you consider upgrading to a paid account?

In this article I will share three compelling reasons why you should consider upgrading to a LinkedIn Premium membership.

These three useful features include the Advanced Search, Who’s Viewed Your Profile and InMail.

Check out why you may want to upgrade.

While there are a number of different types of paid LinkedIn accounts you can choose from (LinkedIn Premium, For Recruiters, For Job Seekers, For Sales Professionals), LinkedIn Premium is the most balanced paid account type that will generally suit most business owners and professionals.

The LinkedIn Premium account has four different levels of membership that you can choose from depending on your budget and needs:

Here are three of the benefits that may have you wanting to switch from a free account to a LinkedIn Premium account.

The left section of the Advanced Search is available to all LinkedIn members and includes several fields such as keywords, location and company. In the right-hand section of the Advanced Search are several Premium fields that are valuable because of their ability to help you greatly narrow down and target your searches.

Both paid and free members can use the Relationship, Groups, Location, Current Company, Industry, Past Company, School and Language fields in the Advanced Search.

While several fields (Industries, Groups, Relationship and Current Company) are available to all members, there are eight fields that are available to the different levels of paying members only (all eight fields are available only to the Executive and Pro Premium level members). Premium Members with the Business or Business Plus level membership have access to the following four fields:

Company Size—This can be beneficial; for example, for businesses that target small businesses and freelancers (select the 1-10 option), members looking for very large businesses (select the 10,000+ option) or any size in between. You can limit your search by company size.Seniority Level—Narrow your search by seniority levels such as VP, manager, senior, owner and partner. Only search for the seniority level or positions that are useful to you.Interested In—Choose from options such as Industry Experts, Entrepreneurs, Potential Employees or Consultants/Contractors to look for specific groups of people. Quickly search for people like industry experts and entrepreneurs with the Interested In field.Fortune 1000—Search strictly for employees at Fortune 1000 companies. There are a number of options that allow you to select the Fortune 50, Fortune 501-1000 and several choices in between. Narrow your search to Fortune 1000 companies.

For example, you may want to search for facilitators within your local area whom you may not already be connected with but you share a group with. To do this, you would simply type “facilitator” into the Keyword field, select the country, enter your ZIP code or postal code and select within 50 mi (80 km) and finally select Group Members under Relationship.

Finding the people in whom you are most interested using multiple search fields. Search results are more relevant using Advanced Search.

Another example would be if you were looking to connect with the Communications VPs of Fortune 50 companies whom you share a connection or group with. For this search, you would type “communications” into the keyword field, select Location Anywhere and then check 2nd Connections and Group Members from Relationship, VP from Seniority Level and Fortune 50 under the Fortune 1000 section.

Save time prospecting by searching for LinkedIn members who meet your search requirements. Get the best search results using Advanced Search.

Finally, Advanced Search allows you to save your searches. Not only will this feature remember your search, it will also send you weekly or monthly notices of any new member profiles that become a part of your network. You can also scan these new profiles from the Saved Search Tab by clicking on the number under New.

As a free member, you can save three searches, while Premium members have the ability to save up to 7 with the additional bonus of 500 profiles showing up in the search results rather than the standard 100 that comes with free membership.

Saved Searches make it easy to locate new people in your network who meet your search requirements.

An excellent source of potential connections lies in your Who’s Viewed Your Profile page. This page includes a list of people who have recently viewed your profile. While free members can only see the last five people to have viewed their profile, Premium members get the full list of people from the last 90 days.

See who has recently viewed your profile on the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page.

From this list you can find targeted prospects, potential clients or strategic alliances and reach out and connect or send them a message.

For best results when contacting these prospects, send them a personalized connection request to start a conversation with them, rather than mentioning you saw they viewed your profile.

Also located on the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page is a list of keywords that people have used to search when they viewed your profile. This can be extremely valuable; as it will tell you what keywords you are being found with most often.

With this information you can choose to further optimize your profile with these keywords or, if those are not the keywords you wish to be found for, you can go back and re-optimize your profile for the keywords you want to be found for.

Learn what keywords people are using when they find you.

Two additional benefits to the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page is the Views by Industry and Views by Geography sections.

The View by Industry area will help you highlight the top industries of people who have viewed your profile. If one of the industries listed at the top is not one that you currently are marketing to, this may indicate a potential untapped market that you should consider prospecting.

Knowing which industries your profile viewers are from can provide useful information about potential markets.

Views by Geography can provide similar insight, as it will list the countries your profile is most viewed from. If it is appropriate for your business, you may wish to consider reaching out to people located in the top countries on your list to expand your market.

Find out how many people from which countries are viewing your profile.

InMail is a message you send directly within LinkedIn to another member you are not already connected with. You might choose to send these to people with whom you would like to connect before you send a LinkedIn connection request to see if they’d be open to connecting with you on LinkedIn.

Using an InMail greatly increases your chances of success because they have a much higher open rate compared to that of email, as well as a strong lead conversion rate of 7%. This improves your ability to talk to and connect directly with top decision-makers.

This feature also includes a guaranteed 7-day response rate. If the person you contacted doesn’t contact you within 7 days, LinkedIn will credit you with another InMail to send, whether or not they reply to you after the 7 days.

Reach out to people outside of your network by sending an InMail.

While all members can purchase InMails, there are a number of benefits that are exclusive to Premium members. As a Premium member, you receive a number of free InMails each month (this number depends on which type of LinkedIn Premium membership you buy), you can accumulate your InMail credits from month to month (but they will expire after 90 days) and you can purchase up to 10 more InMails than your account type allows.

Over to You

While the paid LinkedIn service is not for everyone, I hope that I have provided you the information you need to decide whether LinkedIn Premium membership is right for you and your business.

What do you think? Which Premium tools do you think are the most valuable? Leave your questions and comments below.

About the Author, Melonie Dodaro

Melonie Dodaro is recognized as Canada’s #1 LinkedIn expert and is the founder of Top Dog Social Media, a company that helps businesses leverage the power of social media. Other posts by Melonie Dodaro »

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How to Grow Your Google+ Engagement

By Megan Conley
Published July 3, 2013

Are you getting the most from your Google+ presence?

Are you looking for ways to improve your Google+ engagement?

Well look no further.

In this article I’ll share five ways you can improve your Google+ experience.

Because Google+ isn’t just a social network–it’s part of a powerful social platform that integrates with key capabilities like Google Docs, chat, hangouts, email and more.

For that reason alone, Google+ is a high-value opportunity worth investing time and resources to cultivate.

A common misconception is that Google+ is a ghost town. In reality, Google+ is home to vibrant, active communities that foster deep engagement. The trick is learning how to find and take advantage of these communities to build long-lasting relationships with your core audiences.

Here are five effective strategies that will take your engagement on Google+ to a whole new level.

First, to make sure your Google+ page is easily findable, add a Google+ Badge to your website. You can add a badge for both personal Google+ accounts and business accounts.

Here’s an example of a Google+ Badge code that you can place on your website.

Badges make it easy for visitors to find and engage with you in one simple click of a mouse.

Curation isn’t just for content; it’s an important tool for organizing your relationships on Google+. Circles are an effective way to manage different interest groups and home in on the communities and conversations that matter to you.

For example, you can create circles around themes such as Food, Fly Fishing, Content Marketing, Social Media Experts, Dog Lovers, etc.

Curation isn’t just for content; it’s also for organizing networks.

Use keyword searches to identify relevant people/pages/posts to add to your circles.

Here’s a result of a Google+ search.

Using circles is a great technique for building new relationships, as well as for keeping current relationships warm. Strategically curating your circles will make it easy to target and stay connected with the right people.

Here’s an example of a Google+ circle.

For example, it’s important for me to follow and engage with thought leaders in the social media space. I’ve created a Social Media circle that makes it easy for me to drop in on those people and participate in their Google+ activities without doing a regular search or sifting through my regular feed to find their content.

There are different types of compelling content.

Visual content

Consistent with other social networks, the importance of relevant, compelling content can’t be overlooked. Prioritizing highly visual content such as images, videos and infographics is a winning strategy to stimulate engagement and promote shareability.

At Social Media Marketing World 2013, Guy Kawasaki shared one of his pro tips—he deletes auto-generated thumbnail images in favor of larger, visually compelling screenshot images to maximize the engagement on his Google+ posts.

For example, this Mother’s Day post uses a screenshot of a larger, more visually appealing image of the video, attached to the post with a trackable link, instead of using the auto-generated thumbnail.

Use large images in lieu of thumbnails to attract more interest in your posts.

Resource content

Another type of content that solicits a large number of comments (especially in Communities) is how-to–style pieces that include links back to other resources.

It’s generally acceptable for these to be text-heavy because they’re information-rich and address a specific question or need. This is a great opportunity to link back to your blog for additional resources.

Here’s an example of a resource / how-to post on Google+.

Keep in mind you should still include a visually engaging image whenever possible. If it isn’t possible to include an image, here’s a great guideline on how to structure lengthy text posts to maximize readership.

Hashtags

Many people do not realize that you can use hashtags on Google+. And although you don’t need to use hashtags to find information—Google+ search functionality is excellent—you can use hashtags there too!

Adding a #hashtag can make it easier for you to find related posts, follow ongoing conversations and join trending topics.

Here’s an example of a hashtag used on Google+.

Using hashtags makes it easier to follow popular hashtag conversations across social platforms.

Simply put, the conversation starts with you. Merely posting or sharing content isn’t sufficient if you really want to build deep engagement with your community.

It’s equally, if not more, important to interact by commenting on other people’s posts, asking questions and adding your opinion/perspective to existing conversations.

A few hands-on tips to boost engagement:

Always end your post with a question to spark discussion.Respond to users’ comments or questions, and ask follow-up questions to continue to drive the discussion.Develop repeatable campaigns that are easy for users to participate in and contribute to. Utilize a unique hashtag dedicated to a campaign and stay consistent (e.g., #FeedbackFridays, for which every Friday you pose a question/idea to your customers).Use + mentions whenever possible to engage people and invite them to join the conversation.Create high-quality, relevant content that is useful to your audience.Quotes, beautified/interesting photos and pithy, humorous content are also categories that are very popular on Google+. An example of how to use + mentions to promote engagement on Google+.

Another great strategy to kickstart engagement is to participate in “What’s trending?” topics, found on the Home menu under What’s Hot. These are broad trends that are easy to relate and contribute to.

An example of a “What’s Hot and Recommended” post on Google+.

Lastly, track progress by setting daily goals for “proactive interactions,” interactions you initiate with others. An ideal number to start with is 2-3 proactive comments, questions or compliments per day, in addition to information-sharing posts.

Every interaction counts. It won’t be long before all of those conversation starters add up.

Google+ Communities and Hangouts are gold mines for connecting and engaging with other users, especially those with interests relevant to your business. Participating in these features is critical to building a strong presence.

Google+ Communities and Hangouts are designed to foster connections around specific interests and passions. Self-promotional marketing won’t fly here, unless you enjoy the sound of crickets.

Communities

There are over 50,000 communities on Google+, spanning interests from social media to veganism to dog lovers. In short, there’s something for everyone!

Once you’ve identified and joined relevant communities, make it a priority to participate regularly. A child of Google, Google+ is also built on the principles of high-quality information-sharing; be sure to actively ask and answer questions, as well as share valuable content to fuel engagement and build quality relationships.

Here’s an example some Communities on Google+.

Hangouts

Google+ Hangouts and Hangouts on Air (HOA) offer businesses an opportunity to enhance engagement with users/customers through live, real-time, multimedia interaction. These unique functionalities give businesses an important advantage, making it easier than ever to open direct lines of communication with customers, solicit feedback, promote dialogue and build brand loyalty.

Here’s Cadbury Chocolate in the UK doing a Google+ Hangout.

A great example of this is Cadbury UK, a chocolate company that used Google+ HOA to incorporate their customers into the Cadbury experience by engaging them in online activities, hosting contests and inviting them to share product feedback.

Google+ HOA are live-streamed videos with interactive participation—a stellar tool to cultivate and engage key audiences.

HOA have been successfully leveraged for businesses, education, even politics. HOA are automatically recorded and can be posted to YouTube with a link back to your blog for a nice SEO boost.

Here’s Michelle Obama on Google+ HOA.

Your Turn

Incorporating these five strategies will help you build long-lasting relationships with your core audiences and boost your engagement on Google+.

What do you think? Have you used Google+ to support your business goals? What’s been successful for your business? Leave your comments and questions below.

About the Author, Megan Conley

Megan is the Founder & CEO of Social Tribe, a social engagement agency that connects brands to customers through social media. Social Tribe has served clients such as Cisco Systems, SAP, SuccessFactors and many others. Follow her on Twitter @megconley @socltribe Other posts by Megan Conley »

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New Google+ Website Plugins: This Week in Social Media

By Cindy King
Published July 6, 2013

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

Google+ Launches New Plugins for Your Website: Google+ launches “a bunch of new plugins that help visitors to connect with you on Google+, directly from your website.”  There’s an updated Google+ Follow plugin and updated badges for your Google+ Profiles and Pages.  You can now also create a badge for your Google+ Communities.

Check out the updated Google+ Page badges.

LinkedIn Adds the Top Requested Features to Their Mobile App: LinkedIn has “added the top requested features — the ability to search for jobs, companies, groups and people on-the-go. In addition they have added a few tips to help you be more productive from wherever you may be working.”

With LinkedIn mobile, you can now find and discover people, jobs and groups.

Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

Facebook Announces a New Review Policy for Pages and Groups: Facebook will “implement a new review process for determining which Pages and Groups should feature ads alongside their content. This process will expand the scope of Pages and Groups that should be ad-restricted.”

For example, Facebook “will now seek to restrict ads from appearing next to Pages and Groups that contain any violent, graphic or sexual content [content that does not violate (current) community standards]. Prior to this change, a Page selling adult products was eligible to have ads appear on its right-hand side; now there will not be ads displayed next to this type of content.”

Twitter Decides Auto-Follow-Back Is Now Taboo: SocialOomph reports that “Twitter changed their terms of service and outlawed automated following back of people who followed you first.”

Bing Integrates Search Prevalence Into the Klout Score: Klout announces “the official integration of Bing search results into the Klout Score.” This means that “the number of times you are searched for on Bing will now contribute directly to your Klout Score.”

Bing has just been added to Klout.

Groupon Rolls Out Groupon Reserve: Groupon Reserve “allows you to easily book tables (from the comfort of your own couch) at some of the best restaurants in your city at discounts of up to 40 percent.”

Groupon Reserve allows you to book from the comfort of your couch.

SlideShare Adds Dropbox Functionality: “You can now easily upload your presentations, documents and videos saved in Dropbox to SlideShare!”

Use Dropbox to upload your presentations, documents or videos to SlideShare.

The HootSuite Syndicator Combines the Power of RSS With Social Media: With the shutdown of Google Reader this week, HootSuite has enhanced its “RSS capabilities to not only provide a powerful solution for bringing content into the dash from around the web, but also for managing and curating content through social syndication.”

Here’s more interesting news to follow:

Twitter Starts Experimenting With New Ways to Tailor Ads: Starting soon, Twitter will be experimenting with a way to make ads on Twitter more appealing to users in the United States “by displaying promoted content from brands and businesses they’ve shown interest in. Users won’t see more ads on Twitter, but they may see better ones.”

Digg Reader Is Now Open to the Public: “After a week of testing and scaling, adding batches of users and improving our infrastructure, Digg are happy to fully open Digg Reader to the public!”

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

About the Author, Cindy King

Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »

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