September 2013 – Stay N Alive

Month: September 2013

YOU Get a Free Book! And YOU Get a Free Book! How to Use and Make Money Using Facebook Ads

Posted on by jessestay

I mentioned last week that I was launching a new webinar on Facebook ads. In this webinar I’m going to be showing you one of the biggest questions I get in my consulting and coaching for my clients – how you can MAKE money instead of SPEND it on Facebook ads! From my experience, so many business owners are afraid of Facebook ads, or seeing little success because they’re focusing solely on fans and traffic and not revenue. In this already successful, pitch-free course I’m going to show you how to focus on revenue, and increasing that revenue by thousands to tens or even hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars by utilizing a strong Facebook ad campaign. And if you order this week I’m giving you a few perks – FREE stuff!

I’ve spent my career learning how to build massive audiences for multi-national organizations and growing some of the top presences on Facebook. I’ve learned a lot over that time, and it turns out you don’t have to spend much to build an audience on Facebook. And even more – you can use Facebook to actually MAKE money instead of just grow audiences through ad spend. I’d like to show you how.

I don’t want to do it like just any other webinar out there though. In many of the webinars I’ve seen, you pay $200, $300, or some times more to get a little information only to get a big pitch at the end for more information, asking you to spend more to get the full picture! This webinar is going to have NO PITCH. I’ll add you to my list and you can learn about future events, but I want this webinar to be 100% CONTENT. The focus of this webinar is VALUE, and MAKING YOU MONEY through the use of Facebook ads, not pitching you on other products! Not just that, but I’m only charging $150 for what could be THOUSANDS of dollars in revenue you generate from Facebook ads!

This week I’m adding a few more perks though. First, for every person that registers for the webinar by end of this Saturday (Mountain time), YOU GET A FREE COPY OF MY MOST RECENT BOOK with Jason Alba and Rachel Melia, “I’m on Facebook–Now What???” 2nd Edition! On top of that, for all those that register by the end of this week I’ll WAVE THE WEBINAR DOWNLOAD! For those that already purchased the download and would like to upgrade to the live webinar let me know and I’ll arrange an upgrade for you to get both at the $150 price. For those that purchased the download and webinar together I’ll refund your download immediately!

LARGE GROUPS – I can give you a group rate if you contact me. Just contact me at jesse@staynalive.com and I can arrange a group rate for your organization.

There’s ONE MORE THING. I want to let everyone have a chance at hearing this message – it’s important to me. I know there are individuals and businesses that can’t afford this course right now. Or, maybe you know someone in this situation. For that reason I want to choose 5 individuals to give the webinar and download, and a digital copy of I’m on Facebook–Now What??? FREE OF CHARGE. All you need to do is pitch why you think you, your business, or your friend needs to take this course, and post it somewhere that I can see. Post in the comments of this blog post. Post in the comments on my Facebook posts. Write a blog post and tag me in it. I want to hear your stories! Consider this seed money, a gift, to get you going in making THOUSANDS in revenue from the knowledge you’ll learn off this course! So let me know your story!!! This will expire the Wednesday before the webinar.

This webinar is the best way I know to impart knowledge to as many people as possible and get the word out to as many as I can. I want all of you to learn what I’ve learned. I truly believe that ANYONE can be a Marketer! I want you to learn too, so GO SIGN UP NOW! (and share this and tell your friends!) I need your help to make this a success!

How to Optimize Your Facebook Ads for Event Conversions on Eventbrite

Posted on by jessestay

In preparation for my upcoming webinar on Facebook ads, I felt I would be a hypocrite if I did not use some of the strategies I’m teaching in the webinar on my own event for the webinar. In searching Google, I couldn’t find any good solution listed, but I did figure out a way to optimize your Facebook ad campaigns for when people buy, or sign up for your events on Eventbrite. That means Facebook will do its best to only charge you for your Facebook ads when people purchase your event!

The secret is simple. At the end of the Eventbrite event registration process, there is a confirmation page each attendee is taken to. You can actually edit this page, and it takes HTML. So all you need to do is get your Facebook conversion pixel in there and you’re good to go. Here are the steps:

First, get your Facebook conversion pixel

To start off, go to your Facebook Ads Manager. I’m not going to go into fine detail on how to do that – you can go buy my book, I’m on Facebook–Now What??? (the 2nd Edition) to learn how to set up a Facebook ad. Or register for my webinar that takes place in 3 weeks and I’ll even show you some really valuable techniques, just like this one, that will take your ads to the next level! (if you’re reading this after the webinar, you can also purchase downloads at that link)

In Facebook Ads Manager, on the left side column, there is a link that says “Conversion Tracking”. Click on that.

This is the page where you set up your conversion pixel. In the upper-right, you’ll see a big green button that says “Create Conversion Pixel”. Click on that.
A popover will appear, asking you to name your conversion pixel, and select a type. I called my “Eventbrite Ticket Sales”. You can name this whatever you want though. I also choose the “Checkouts” option, since I’m tracking sales. This is just to allow you to categorize different types of conversion pixels you might use. Here’s what mine looks like:
On the following screen/popover you’ll now be given code you can copy and paste into your Eventbrite page. This is what mine looks like:
Do NOT follow the instructions on this page. Instead, all you want for Eventbrite is the piece between the and the tag. In the above example, I would just copy the text, (the image tag) and nothing else. The reason for this is Eventbrite strips out all JavaScript from the code you put on their page, but they do support image tags! The image tag will be all you need. Click “Close”, and your conversion pixel will be set up. You’ll note that right now it says “Unverified” – this means no one has hit a page with your conversion pixel on it. That’s okay. Now we need to add this code to Eventbrite.
Add your conversion pixel code to your Eventbrite Event

To add the code you just created (again, just the image tag!), go to the “Manage” section of your event. This will take you to the Event Dashboard. On the left side of the Event Dashboard, you’re going to want to click the “Order Confirmation” link. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:
On this page, scroll down to the text area at the bottom that says “Message to be displayed on confirmation webpage:” (below “Customize order confirmation webpage”). This is the area you want to add your code. Below any confirmation message you add, copy, and paste the conversion pixel image tag you copied above. It will look like this when you’re done:
Now, click “Save”, but there’s one more thing you need to do. You want your conversion pixel to be verified. Once saved, click on the link, “View your current order confirmation page” below the final text area where you entered your conversion pixel code. This will take you to what looks like the order confirmation page. Don’t worry – your conversion pixel is invisible, so you won’t actually see it on this page, but you did want this page to load at least once!
Now that you’ve loaded your page, go back to your Facebook Ads Manager, look at the “Conversion Tracking” page again, and next to your conversion tracking link you just set up, it will now have a big, green “active” next to it if all worked well! This means your conversion pixel now works, and will load every time someone buys one of your event options!
So now you just need to add the conversion pixel to your Facebook ad.
Set up your Facebook Ad with your conversion pixel

In the Facebook Ad you created, at the bottom, you can set optimization options. You should have the option to “optimize for conversion”. Select this, and a drop-down will appear with your new conversion pixel listed in it. Select that conversion pixel. Now, Facebook will do its best to make what you pay only occur when an actual conversion occurs! This means real sales, for a fraction of what you’re paying in Facebook ads. That should be how every one of your Facebook ad campaigns runs.
Want to focus more of your ad campaigns on conversions? I’ve got a webinar coming up where I’ll share how to build audiences on your Facebook Pages that you can optimize for conversions. My techniques aren’t well known in the industry, so you’ll be learning very unique strategies, just like this one, that can help take your Facebook ad campaigns to the next level! You don’t want to miss this – go sign up here!

Are YOU a Social Asset to Your Company? Are Your Employees?

Posted on by jessestay

One of the things I talk about in Google+ Marketing For Dummies is the importance of getting your employees and brand loyalists involved in social media. This is something I’m seeing has more and more importance with the emergence of Google Authorship and the affect a public profile on Facebook has for individuals. The truth is, our culture is evolving from a culture of brands to a culture of people. The focus is no longer on your brand.

For that reason, I think it’s more and more important that you get your employees, or if you’re an employee, yourself, involved more and more in social media. In the future (and to some extent, now!), your job is going to depend on this!

Let’s take Google Authorship as an example. For one organization I worked with, we implemented Google+ profiles for high ranking officials/executives of the organization, and tied those profiles, using Google Authorship, back to content they had written on the organization’s website. With no content whatsoever on the profile, and solely the link to that individual’s profile, the organization saw a 300% increase in traffic on the individual articles written by those individuals on the company’s website. Imagine what it would have been like with MORE followers and MORE content on those profiles! You can see why I talked about making your website more about people, with content written by actual people in your organization in my books.

Just yesterday, SEO experts started complaining that Google was no longer providing keyword data back to websites for identifying the keywords people are searching for when they visit your website. Google is making it clear that it’s not about keywords any more. It’s about people, and real, genuine content. Your employees and the people behind your brand are a critical part of your SEO strategy now. You see the same with Facebook as they try to penalize “memes” and other brand-focused spam in the News Feed.

Google Authorship is just one strategy though. If you follow me on Facebook, you know I don’t have a Facebook Page for just me. I have Facebook Pages for my books and other brands, but not myself. Instead, I use what’s called a “Public Profile”, and allow people to “follow” me there. I actually do this on purpose. There, of course, are disadvantages to not having a Facebook Page for myself – I can’t advertise as easily (I can do a Promoted URL or Promoted Post back to my personal profile, however). There are no Insights/Analytics for personal profiles.

However, the advantage using a Public Profile is it focuses on me as an individual. It allows me to show the person behind my brand. When people follow me they know they’re following a real individual. I can comment much easier on others’ posts. In addition, I show up in Facebook’s suggestion algorithms as a person, which in my opinion favors more highly than Facebook Pages do. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s one example of why all that’s valuable: Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg changed his profile cover image on Facebook to an old graphic of all the relationships that exist around the world on Facebook which their data team put together back in 2010. Within minutes, he saw tens of thousands of likes on the cover image and I was seeing half my friends share it. I was familiar with this graphic because it hangs on the wall in my office – awhile back I blew it up and printed it out so I could show it off (If Facebook provided a way to purchase these they would sell off-the-charts!).

I commented on Mark Zuckerberg’s cover image stating that I had this hanging on my wall. All of the sudden that evening I started seeing friend requests from people trying to friend me, and new followers coming in like crazy! Within 12 hours I gained more than 1,000 new followers on my profile. It turns out Mark Zuckerberg liked my comment along with a few other of my friends that worked at Facebook, and that alone was enough to highlight the comment as the top comment on his cover image. Organically, 1,000 new followers in 12 hours is pretty good, and now I have the chance to build a personal relationship with every single one of those followers! Seriously, if you want to get some quick followers go reply on my comment that’s already highlighted there (only one reply right now!).

So as you can see, it wasn’t my brand, but my personal profile that provided the value. I couldn’t have accomplished that with a brand page, or bland brand website. You (the person, not the brand), and your employees need to be doing the same.

Next time you think about your presence on social media, stop thinking about Facebook Pages and Google+ Pages, and start looking at ways you can engage your employees and yourself as people on social channels. Make them “social embassadors” for your brand, and you should see ten times the success you are seeing with just one marketer and one team in your company focused on just the brand.

In these days, EVERYONE is a marketer! You need to be training your employees to be social assets for your company. If you’re an employee, your social presence, and even more than that, value (number of followers, etc), will be a defining factor of whether you, or the guy being interviewed next to you gets the job. It’s time to start learning to build audiences through social media, and build your own value for the companies you work for.

For companies and business owners interested, I provide a “Social Embassador” training curriculum as part of my “Everyone a Marketer” program. You can learn more about it here. Talk to me (jesse@staynalive.com) if you’re interested in training your own employees as social assets! I am also doing a webinar in 3 weeks that you and your employees can learn how to grow your brand through Facebook ads. Go here to purchase your tickets and learn more!

ANYONE Can (and Should) be a Marketer! My New Business and Focus

Posted on by jessestay

About 7 years ago I was sitting in a full-time job, developing software as a senior engineer for UnitedHealth Group. I loved writing software, and began writing a few tools on the side just for the fun of it. I couldn’t build an audience though! I was stuck – great software, with nowhere to go. I’ve heard this over and over again from other software developers, small business owners, executives, product managers, and the like, all lacking the proper skills they need to grow an audience successfully and do it without paying an expensive marketer or social media professional. I feel your pain!

I spent the next 7 years experimenting and trying new methods I learned from friends of mine and other marketing experts to where I finally think I’ve come up with the optimal process in growing audiences and revenue from those audiences. I ended up writing 6 books from my experience. I began to take some of my software development skills to take things I learned writing documentation for Facebook, Inc. and turn that into a concept I call “social design”. I learned perfect methods for Facebook, and Google+ Page growth. I learned ways to advertise on Facebook that many Marketers today still come to me asking about. In all honesty, I don’t share any of this to boast, but to show the learning process I went through.

You’ve probably seen me lately trying to figure out “my next thing”. Do I look for a job? Do I consult? Do I build a product? I’ve been meeting with a lot of people, and received some amazing advice. Today I’d like to announce what that next big thing is!

Today I’m announcing my “Everyone a Marketer” program with a series of webinars, online training curriculum, corporate retreats, and individual coaching all catered to showing anyone from the software developer, to the business executive, to even the marketing department itself how to grow significant audiences, and how to grow revenue from those audiences. The idea is that I want to show you, and every one of you how to become a marketer. I want to show you how to grow audiences. I want to show you how to sell to those audiences. I want to show you how to target to specific audiences. I want to show you how to learn who your audiences are. I want to show businesses how to engage their employees as marketers and social assets for the organization!

I’m kicking it off TODAY with the announcement of my first webinar in the program! I’m calling it, on this same theme, “Everyone can Learn Facebook Ads! How to Build Fans and Revenue With FB Ads”, or “Mad Facebook Ads!”. I’m spending 1, jam-packed hour to show you techniques I’ve learned with the organizations I’ve worked for, and clients of mine that will grow Facebook Pages using Facebook ads at a very low cost. Have you ever seen $.002 (that 2-tenths of a cent folks!) per like in your Facebook ad campaigns? I have! I want to show you how.

Registration is fairly cheap considering the value you’re going to get – for $150 you get access to the webinar and the Q&A for 1/2 hour afterwards (That’s half of what I charge for consulting!). This is potentially thousands of dollars in savings you’ll get from the knowledge you’ll receive in the webinar! My hope is for you to get much, much more out of this than you put in – I’m extremely passionate about this subject, and making YOU successful! If you don’t want to attend the live webinar, you can download for a reduced price the recorded version after the webinar is finished.

YOU CAN REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR HERE! GO NOW! 🙂

It doesn’t stop there! I need your help! If you want to join me in growing this webinar, I have set up a simple affiliate program for you to help me promote the webinar. Each affiliate gets 33% of any ticket sales they refer, which is pretty good for an affiliate program in my experience! Will you please SHARE this webinar with your friends and family? TO SIGN UP AS AN AFFILIATE, CLICK HERE! This is a great opportunity!

I’m limiting this to just 100 people per day (2 different days, same webinar), so act quick – I’m predicting this will sell out quick! Again, GO HERE TO REGISTER! This will sell out soon!

Oh, and STAY tuned for more! I’ve got much, much more planned for this program! I want YOU to learn what I’ve learned! If you want to learn more, GO HERE AND SIGN UP TO RECEIVE UPDATES!

In the Collaborative Economy, Are Local Classifieds in Trouble?

Posted on by jessestay

I’m a big fan of my friend Jeremiah Owyang’s principle of “The Collaborative Economy.” The principle is thus (yet very hard to explain unless you actually experience it): the trend in social media, up to this point, has been the sharing of virtual content, goods, and services through close friends and family on social networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. The Collaborative Economy is a new phase of this principle, where instead of only sharing online, close friends, family, and some times strangers are now using online tools to find ways to share in real life. The idea, when applied to commerce is that instead of businesses being the source of the transaction from them to their customers, they will instead become the facilitator of the transaction between customer and other customers. The future of social media will be services like Uber, AirBNB, and others that grasp this concept and enable real life social transactions to occur in physical form, from customer to customer and not from big business to customer.

This is why I fear for local classifieds markets. Having worked for 2 media companies so far (and at one being responsible for developing new online classified experiences), I know how important classifieds are to the revenue of local news media. Classifieds are at the core of revenue for most news media outlets, outside display advertising, and as sites like Craigslist have taken over these markets you are seeing some of that result on revenue for local news around the world. It affects these markets so much that you see when local classifieds sites like Salt Lake City’s KSL Classifieds overtake Craigslist, it develops a sort of monopoly on the market in terms of classifieds revenue that goes to these news orgs within the local market.

A key element to good Classifieds is getting local auto dealers to sign on. On top of that, real estate is another big factor for revenue in modern classifieds sites. To get an idea of where that revenue comes from, just go down any classified site like Craigslist or KSL Classifieds and look at which ads they charge you money for. You’ll see the biggest are auto and real estate. There are other similar categories though.

This is where the trouble begins. Right now we know (Deseret News, KSL Classifieds’ own sister site declared the end of cars!) that automobile sales are in decline in favor of services such as Uber (for getting around town with a driver) or ZipCar (for getting around on your own) or RelayRides (for longer-term car rentals) that embrace the Collaborative economy. On the real estate front, you’re seeing more and more people embrace the collaborative economy in favor of renting through services such as AirBNB. All of this is so much so that businesses like Ford are reconsidering their sales strategy to provide similar type rental services of their cars as they recognize the recent decline in sales.

In fact, my friend Jeremiah Owyang, who is advising many of these businesses already, is seeing such great demand in this market that he recently quit his job at Altimeter in favor of advising these businesses full time on their collaborative strategy. This should have all classifieds departments in news organizations, as well as Craigslist and the like paying attention – their revenue stream from autos, real estate, and similar transactions is in trouble!

My hope is that local classifieds, Craigslist, Ebay, and other similar sites begin to recognize this. Person-to-person transactions are in, and business-to-person transactions are on the way out. Services such as the person-to-person trade service Yerdle (founded by a former Walmart exec Andy Ruben, btw), really get this. They’re finding ways to build business models without the businesses at the top of the model, focusing on platform the B2B relationship. They’re developing new business models unfamiliar to traditional e-commerce sites, and ways to get in the middle of those C2C (Customer-to-Customer) transactions. Local classifieds will need to take this same approach in the future to survive as their business partners stop selling, and start taking this same approach (essentially making those partners competitors!).

I mentioned before that local news orgs are competitors with Facebook and other social networks and they don’t realize it yet. Local news has the potential for a very strong, tight-knit community of individuals passionate about their community and growing that community. They are in the business of sharing, and getting people to share. When it comes to classifieds, this applies there as well – the future of classifieds is, and should be the collaborative economy, and facilitating transactions from customer to customer, not from the business to the customer. As long as the revenue comes from the latter, classifieds websites are going to suffer in the future, and those that get this will be the winners.

The Future of Local News WILL Disrupt Facebook

Posted on by jessestay

I am often asked, “will Facebook ever go the way of MySpace?” The truth is Facebook has been very good, like it or not, at not looking at current users’ needs, but instead anticipating the needs of future users, therefore fixing the Innovator’s Dilemma and ensuring their survival. There is one thing Facebook is overlooking right now, and with what I have seen in the news industry, I think Facebook may be blind-sighted at what I think is going to happen. The answer lies in the local news orgs.

The truth is, the current state of local news is in trouble. Revenue of news orgs is at the same level it was back in the 50s. People are seeking their news online. People are replacing their TV watching habits with Youtube, and Hulu, Netflix, Xbox, and Apple TV. At one news org I worked with, the term, “side door traffic” was brought up over and over again, as something to strive for. The fact of the matter is, people have stopped having the news open all day, in favor of sites like Facebook and Twitter and Google+. Homepage traffic is at a meager low right now for all local news orgs.

Print Media is going the way of the dinosaur. Newspapers are dying. Magazines are dying. So as a result, news is going entirely online. Now we find both print and video orgs, especially at the local level, competing against each other in a market where they previously did not compete. The sad thing is many of these former print and former video news orgs don’t realize they are now in competition with each other (much due to the fact that Nielsen ratings still exist and ad revenue is still going towards different sources like TV, but that won’t last for long).

Here’s what I predict will happen (and is already happening, to an extent): the TV and the Print organizations will be forced to merge, or compete in the very near future. Local TV and local Print news orgs will no longer be Print and TV orgs, but just “Web orgs.” The same reporters that serve print will also serve TV, and video will, more and more, move towards the same online source that print is located. Ad dollars will all go towards the web. Youtube strategies will become more important as more people use Youtube to get entertainment and news. It will no longer be a TV or print strategy, but a “multi-media strategy.”

This is all just the beginning though. Once print and TV at the local level all merge, local news orgs will be unified again. Print won’t be competing with TV, and the same for vice-versa. Sales teams will all be selling for a common goal, and new ad technologies will be developed. Social technologies will be integrated, allowing ordinary citizens to provide news and video, and targeted ads will be built targeting the user and their friends at the local level, where they are (through mobile technologies). People will be able to follow their friends on these websites and mobile apps.

This is when Facebook should feel threatened. At this point, news orgs will begin to realize that Facebook has been doing this for years now. Facebook now becomes the competition for them. The competition will go from getting “side door traffic” to getting “front door traffic” as Facebook does. The fight will be to get the user to have YOUR website open all day, not rely on them to congregate at places like Facebook to get their news.

The difference between now and before though is that local news orgs have a monopoly on their local markets. It won’t be like Washington Post and their “social reader” that targets a global audience and their friends. It will be a much more localized, personal audience of people much more devoted because it represents their culture and information they are much more familiar with. This puts local news orgs at competition directly with Facebook.

At KSL.com, owned by a former employer of mine, they had the market on classifieds, perhaps the only market in the USA to overtake Craigslist in traffic and community. They did this through following the devotions and loyalties of a passionate local audience and culture. The same can, and will be done with social. I saw similar passionate cultures and niche communities in the many communities that Media General served when I worked there. This can be repeated.

The biggest disruption to Facebook is going to happen when these local news orgs are forced to reinvent themselves, and utilize their passionate, niche local audiences to take advantage of circles of friends that are very tightly woven in the areas they serve. It’s not ready yet, but desperation and disruption in the local news industry is going to force this as soon as they realize Facebook is actually their competition – mark my words. Facebook is local news’ biggest competitor – they just don’t realize it yet.