My biggest surprise as a new blogger: Blogging is so much than writing that perfect post! Pouring out your heart and soul into a blog post or product is just the beginning! I quickly learned to get your work in front of the right audience—well, that’s a whole other beast! Because, let’s face it—we want someone to read our stuff! We want to help and bless others with this work we’ve been called to do! Not to mention…we’d really love to make some money doing it! And regardless of how you monetize your blog—we all need page views! Highly targeted Facebook promotions are a great way to increase pageviews and drive down promotion costs!
Why Focus on Increasing Page Views
For new bloggers, increasing page views is important for building an online presence, reputation, and foundation of readers. As pageviews increase—so do the monetization options!
If you’re working with an ad network, obviously more page views equal more ad revenue! Personally, I wanted to move beyond Google Adsense and work with an ad network that would offer me significantly more money—and the sooner the better (Google Adsense doesn’t pay very well). But moving to a better ad network requires increasing pageviews! 6 months after my blog launch, I was able to reach my pageview goals and join a better ad network by using targeted promotions on Facebook as part of my growth strategy.
Even if monetization through ads isn’t your cup of tea—pageviews are crucial for getting the right readers to your affiliate links, email list, and products! Promoting to your target audience on Facebook is going to increase your conversion rates for all the good stuff that helps grow your business!
Tips for Successful Facebook Promotions
Facebook tells me that my cost per link click is less than 95% of similar ad sets! I pay MUCH lower than the average $.26 per click! In fact, I rarely pay $.10 per click! Let’s jump in and look at how I’m targeting my audience to get these results!
1) Get the Facebook Pixel
If you haven’t added the Facebook Pixel…Run! Go get it (a totally free tool from Facebook) and put it on your site now! The sooner you get Facebook Pixel running on your site, the sooner Facebook will be able to “see,” who is visiting your posts through Facebook promotion links. With this powerful information, ads can be promoted to more targeted audiences.
For example, I have some really popular Disney articles on Facebook. Every time someone visits my site through a Facebook promotion and reads the Disney articles—that information is stored. When I make another post about Disney, I can promote the new post directly to the people who visited the previous Disney posts and/or Facebook can create for me a look-a-like audience based on those Facebook visitors. My promotion will be targeted to the perfect audience for that post!
2) Imagine Your Reader—What do they like on Facebook?
As you’re waiting for the Facebook pixel to compile data on your promotions—you can use keyword targeting to set up promotions now. Narrow down the audience (I usually keep mine in the US), target the age group you want, and use important keywords! Think about the interests a reader for the specific post you’re promoting may have…
Before my Disney posts had pixel information built up to help create an audience—I targeted people who had interests in Disney, Disney Junior, and who followed other Disney Pages on Facebook! You can get really specific! So think about what other Facebook pages your ideal reader probably likes and follows—include people who like those pages into your audience list!
3) Only pay for CLICKS
Pay for clicks, Sweet Friends! Likes and engagement are lovely—but not what we’re going for here! We want pageviews! So we are only going to pay for clicks! Here’s a screen shot…Choose Traffic!! (For more specific help in setting up a Facebook Ad Campaign visit my post that walks through the steps!)
4) Set Your Price And Adjust in Real-Time
When setting your ad campaign price, you can pick a lifetime budget or daily budget. I normally choose a 2 week lifetime budget (planning for $3 dollars a day) and don’t set a manual bid price at first–leave it on the automatic default.
After 3 days we check our cost-per-click rate–and at this point, we change our bid from automatic (default) to a manual bid. Then we assign our click rate to $.10–no more than that. It will take Facebook a few days to adjust–but you will get targeted clicks at this lower price! About 3 days later, we drop our price again to $.08. Keep cranking your price per click down to around $.06–you may actually end up getting lower bids!
5) Dynamic Audiences
Facebook audiences are dynamic—meaning that Facebook is continually tweaking your target audience! Which is awesome! And with this in mind—always set your time to 180 days when creating an audience, even for a brand new post! Facebook will keep using the data collected over the 180 days to make audience adjustments! Here’s a screen shot–as you can see I chose 180 days (even though that post is much newer)!
6) Evergreen Promotions=Steady Pageviews
Once you’ve created a really cost-effective promotion that drives a lot of traffic to your site—just keep it going! I have several articles that run on about $.04 per click (I’ve even got a post running at $.02 per click)! They are worth way more than that in ad money and subscribers to me, so I let them run all the time!
Your Readers are Waiting
A targeted Facebook audience is really engaged in your content—they love reading and sharing your posts! Facebook promotions may take a little work and planning, but finding those loyal followers pays off in so many ways!
