Step Three - Understanding Facebook Part II

About 6 months ago, Facebook made a huge decision. Mark Zuckerberg finally agreed to let adds appear in Facebook's Newsfeed. "It drives me crazy when people write stuff and assert that we're doing something because the goal is to make a lot of money," he told the Wall Street Journal. But guess what? Facebook is going to make a lot of money. One of my marketing mentors predicts upwards of 20 billion dollars in advertising revenue within two years. Shares might not be a bad idea. Why? Your Facebook is slowly changing into another animal… My guess is that you have already noticed these annoying adds on your Facebook newsfeed, but have no idea what it means for the future. Well, it means a lot. It’s a huge, game-changer. Facebook is on its way to surpass Google as the most extraordinary advertising medium, ever. Think of it this way: for a long, long time there was just word of mouth, then Gutenberg's press in 1450, radio in 1900s, BBC TV in 1929, another pause, then internet/email, websites/Google adds and now - Facebook. Facebook is a new communication platform of this same ilk. As I wrote in my previous blog "Understanding Facebook Part I" Facebook is not a website, it is a utility. It should appear in Monopoly as the best buy of the four Utilities along each quadrant of the game: Amazon, Apple Google and Facebook. Google knows what you are looking for, Facebook knows what you are thinking about. Google knows where you are, Facebook knows where you are going. Google is the king of Demographics, but Facebook consumes that within it's Psychographics… What Is Psychographics? Getting Psychographical data used to be a hugely expensive, big ticket marketing research skill utilized by multi-national corporations. Not anymore. It’s available to you now. But you better be smart about it - because you can spend and lose a lot of money on useless Facebook advertising if you do not know how to collect and use psychographical data. There used to be a multitude of easy ways you could use Facebook to build your business for free, but with the recent decision to include advertisements in the Newsfeed these days have come to an abrupt end. However don’t despair - smart people know what to do: use psychographical data to create laser-focused campaigns that achieve extraordinary conversion rates. That's how you save money! Facebook requires of you a different mind set, new skills and abundant caution. This month I intend to walk you through the mine field - giving you the clarity and wherewithal you need to make sense of how to use this extraordinary new resource to lift up your session numbers. Join me this month and get smart about Facebook. Yes, I want to join ATSuccess this month and Learn about Facebook. What Does It Mean To Be David? [NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid area describing practical ways to implement what has been described above in a Facebook group with 47 other teachers and students. You can join anytime to be part of their discussions.] Membership Insights: You're David, FaceBook is Goliath.

The article that Imogen posted to ATSuccess is shows what is happening to David: the phenomenon it describes is a result of the substantial changes that Facebook has been making to its advertising platform over the last 6 months. It’s a real problem, but it’s a problem for David, not Facebook. Plenty of well-funded advertisers will happily walk over you - the small time advertiser that this article represents. It’s a sad story played over and over again - and Google is no exception. There are lots of little advertisers in Google too, but their combined weight does not approach the monetary power of the major corporations and businesses that feed their advertising dollars into Google coffers, and Facebook will be no different. It’s Wal-Mart and the local corner shop all over again. David and Goliath. You are David. What Does It Mean To Be David? This is where the psychographics comes in. Regulars in my group need only replace that word with "niche" and you have the full meaning. You need a niche or an avatar - without that, you can not do my experiments. Make an experiment: pick a niche, and study it in Facebook this month. Psychographics means you know what keeps your student awake at night - when you know your prospects that well - you can find them using Facebook profiling. That's where this course is going (which is where all my courses go if you hang around long enough): how to find your students. For that, you will spend your money. But not much. Just enough to test a few ideas and gauge the response. Put aside $50, it's enough to get the feel of it: after that, it's up to you what you spend, if at all. What is your niche for this month? https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/ NEXT: Facebook's Newsfeed Algorithm: Hallo to FEO: Facebook Engine Optimisation.