August South Florida Bloggers Meetup Recap – Facebook Ads

There are endless quotes about planning for success, but Benjamin Franklin best summed it up when he said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” So what’s your strategy for growing your following? Did you know that Facebook and Instagram ads could help boost your page and create authentic connections with your audience?

During the August South Florida Bloggers Meet-up, we learned some effective and practical ways of doing that thanks to our founder, Paola Mendez. The group also enjoyed some amazing bites by Cibo Wine Bar in South Beach, including unlimited prosecco, followed by a spectacular brunch spread at the restaurant for all attendees to feast. Thanks to the incredible hospitality at Cibo Wine Bar, we all went home with full bellies!

We want to keep you in the loop around everything we learned as well. Here are a few recap notes from our last meeting.

Why Facebook Ads?

Facebook has over 1.13 billion daily active users that on average spend about 50 minutes on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger everyday! Among them are brands and potential partners that look to Facebook following and engagement as an establishment metric. We want you to learn how easy it is to reach new readers that have never heard of your blog by strategically using Facebook Ads.

3 Levels of Facebook Advertising

The Boost Post is your beginner level and the least effective promotion. This option does not allow you to target a specific audience or to create multiple ad variants to test different copy, images or calls to action (CTA).

The Facebook Ads Manager is the intermediate level that allows you to set up, track and optimize all of your campaigns in one easy interface. In this option you can target a specific audience as well as create tracking pixels for your website to target visitors, and run multiple campaigns to test and optimize your ads.

The advanced level is Power Editor, which is targeted for advanced marketers and advertisers. This is an option better fitted for managing campaigns in bulk.

How to Choose a Facebook Audience

The #1 mistake most bloggers make with Facebook ads is when deciding how to target their audience correctly.

[clickToTweet tweet=”The #1 mistake most bloggers make with Facebook ads is targeting the wrong audience” quote=”The #1 mistake most bloggers make with Facebook ads is when deciding how to target their audience correctly.”]

Of all the options, we recommend you narrow down to these four: Location, Age, Gender and Interests.
If you plan on running concurrent Facebook and Instagram ads, click the button, “Only include photos that will work with Instagram ads.”

Setting a Budget

Different conversion objectives have different values depending on your end goal. You might be willing to pay more for that particular conversion, as you will have a direct pipeline to connect with those readers. While it’s difficult to determine lifetime value, a good rule of thumb is to pay around $1 for light acquisitions (i.e. getting a Facebook like) and $3 for heavy acquisitions (email subscription, event sign-up, product purchase).

Join us in September for more education and blogger collaboration! Lookout for the invite soon.