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In November 2016, without too much fanfare, Twitter launched a marketing automation tool which could be something of a game changer for social media support. The tool that Twitter launched was a bot designed to answer low-level customer service questions and filter clients towards the right department for support. It doesn’t sound like much, but it does represent a paradigm shift for the platform and social media in general.

Twitter used to be all about the human interaction. Quick-fire debating, discussing of topics, and rapid transfer of information was the raison d’être of the channel. Now, the social media giant has shown that it is serious about the possibilities presented by automation.

Of course, this is not such a bad thing. Those imagining customer service departments staffed solely by intelligent machines are seriously wide of the mark. Instead, Twitter is introducing a tool which the vast majority of us already employ – either in out-of-office emails or in live chat support functions hosted on company websites. There is no reason to be alarmed.

However, it does beg the question; how much marketing automation is too much? Are there parts of business to which automation should be barred? Or can automation benefit each and every department?

Exercising Caution

We understand the benefits of marketing automation and the wide-ranging advantages it provides to business, but not everyone is so optimistic about its future. AJ Agrawal, writing for Entrepreneur.com, is particularly cautious.

Writing in August 2016, he warned against using marketing automation to support a lazy approach to business. Automated tools are designed to support productivity and effort, not replace it. For example, marketing automation can handle fiddly lead scoring tasks, enabling you to use your creative talents elsewhere within your organization.

AJ Agrawal also cautions against the wholesale replacement of humans with robots and automated devices. He argued that this leads to a substandard level of communication across the board. Marketers adopting this approach will be connecting with leads and customers on an omni-channel level, but they will not be sufficiently meeting their needs.

The technology is just not sophisticated enough. Contacts will, AJ explains, see through such comprehensive automation and be turned off altogether.

Automated and Natural Communication in Partnership

The view put forward by AJ Agrawal is a valid one and he is certainly correct to an extent, although it is a little bleak. Reaching prospects and clients is often a time and resource-consuming exercise, particularly now that the number of potential channels for connection is increasing. However, it is difficult to imagine any serious marketer abandoning human support and one-to-one interaction altogether.

I cannot think of a single example in which this has happened and the outcomes have been positive. Instead, most savvy marketers are using the two forms of communication in partnership, but even this requires something of a balancing act.

Twitter has only recently introduced this bot function for customer service agent automation, but this is not the first automated tool to be launched on the social media platform. Users can already schedule tweets or tweet templates to launch at key moments, slightly reducing the workload and pressure placed upon marketing and service teams.

Automating social media does have risks – and getting the balance between automated or scheduled and human interaction. Tweeting during times of tragedy looks insensitive at best. And a scheduled tweet happening at a bad time – like a hardware store advertising during an unpredicted natural disaster — can make the company look like it is trying to capitalize on people’s suffering and misfortune.

The Light Touch

The fact of the matter is, we do not yet have the appropriate resources or capability to introduce marketing automation wholesale across our businesses. In this sense, there is such a thing as too much automation. What is needed instead is a light touch; automated processes supporting manual and human ones, and facilitating more effective responses.

For each and every automated protocol we implement, the end result should be to make life easier for our human marketing and service teams, giving them the opportunity to do their jobs more efficiently and with greater efficacy.

Our automated strategies must be considered; they must work in harmony with all other aspects of business. By adopting this approach, we can ensure that our efforts are concerted and that our organizations become slick, well-oiled machines, with each individual component working together to achieve a greater aim.

However, there is no one set ‘correct’ answer to this conundrum. There is always room to maneuver.

What do you think?

How much automation is too much? What side of the balance does your business fall on? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post How Much Marketing Automation Is Too Much? appeared first on GetResponse Blog – Online Marketing Tips.

We’ve all heard about the wonders of Facebook ads for our blogs. You’ll find at least one mention of them on any marketing blog you come across.

But what you may not have found is a guide on how to correctly promote your blog with Facebook ads.

You see, Facebook ads are a fantastic way to promote your blog and gain new readers. But most bloggers aren’t aware of the steps needed to convert cold traffic into valuable readers.

If you’re feeling lost, don’t worry. In this post, I’m going to try to cover as much as I possibly can about creating Facebook ads for your blog, and how you can do it correctly.

But first, you’ll need a Facebook page:

1. Create a Facebook page.

Facebook pages can be an extremely helpful tool to promote your blog.

If you haven’t already, go ahead create your page. Regardless of whether you’ll use it as a social channel or not, you can’t create an ad without one!

Once you’ve created your page, it’s time to log into your Facebook Ad Manager and start creating your ad.

2. Choose an objective.

When you create a Facebook ad, it’s important you use proven formatting techniques to maximize your metrics. Before I go any deeper, let’s start from the beginning:

To create a Facebook ad, go to the Facebook Ad Manager and click on the “Create Ad” button. Once you click the button, you’ll be presented with a ton of different ad campaign goals. For this guide, I’m going to stick with the “Traffic” goal.

Now, some may argue that Facebook’s “Boost Post” option is better for promoting single blog posts.

Don’t get me wrong; boosted posts are a great way to promote your blog on the fly. However, the “Traffic” objective allows you to have much more control over your ad spend, targeting options, and copy.

Once you’ve set your goal, name your campaign and you’ll be ready to set your budget and targeting options.

3. Set your budget and targeting options.

Setting the budget for your Facebook ad will determine whether you come out broke or with a great ROI, so it’s important that you do it right.

When starting off with a brand new ad, it’s a good idea to set the budget of your advertisement for only $5 a day.

This way, you’ll be able to measure the strengths and weaknesses of your ad without spending a fortune on an under-performing campaign.

Later, it’s likely that you’ll start spending more money on well-performing ads, but I’ll touch on that later.

Now let’s get into the nitty gritty: targeting.

If you didn’t know already, one of the main reasons that Facebook ads are so popular in the marketing world is because if their over-the-top targeting options. Facebook ads allow you to target anyone from Android phone users to church-going reptile owners.

When setting your targeting, it’s important that you aren’t shooting for too broad of an audience. It’s easy to get trapped in the illusion of, “Wider Audience = More Engagement”, but this simply isn’t true.

Think of your audience as a single person. What qualities do they have? What are their interests? Who might they follow on Facebook?

If your ad is being seen by too wide of an audience, chances are you’re not going to be receiving a ton of clicks. And when you aren’t getting enough clicks, you’ll start to pay more for the ones you do get!

As you can see from this chart by AdEspresso, studies show that the lower the relevance of a Facebook ad, the higher the amount of money paid per click:

Facebook ads relevance score. Source: Adspresso.com

And I don’t know of anyone who wants to pay more for the same results.

4. Write the ad copy.

Believe it or not, writing the ad text is half the battle. 

According to Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers,

“Everything about the success of your body copy hinges on a single thing: your hook. To find your hook, you need to know exactly for whom you’re writing the ad… and what they care about. Because the goal of the hook is this: make me care.” – From The Beginners Guide to Writing Facebook Ads

When you’re trying to drive cold traffic to your blog, telling your potential readers, “Check out my new blog post! It’s about [topic]… I think you’ll like it!”, will almost never work.

If readers have no idea who you are, there’s little chance they’ll click your links unless they have a good reason to.

So instead of taking the easy route, write a brief and enticing summary of your post that and place it inside the “Text” field of your ad. Here’s an example of what I mean:

Giving readers a glimpse into the problems you’re solving in your post will prove to them that you’re not out there to just take their money.

After you’re finished writing your post summary, come up with an engaging question to ask your target audience at the beginning of your ad.

For instance, if you wrote a blog post called, “5 Easy Methods to Earn New Clients for Your Business”, you could write a question like, “Struggling to find clients for your online business despite putting in hours of backbreaking promotion?” at the beginning of your post.

Asking an engaging question will entice readers to finish reading the rest of your summary. So if you included a call to action at the end of your text, that reader will most likely click to read the rest of your post!

Once you’ve written a killer summary, you’re ready to find a featured image.

5. Choose a featured image.

When creating your ad, it’s important that you’re using images that capture your audience’s attention. This means that using dark colors and bland images is generally not a good idea.

If you look at some metrics from a separate advertisement I ran, you can see that when I used a graphically designed image with light and dark blue colors compared to a stock image with bright warm colors, the stock image received almost 50 more clicks compared to the other post.

Not only did the brighter image receive 40 more clicks, it also had 100 fewer shares!

Furthermore, Facebook strongly prefers that no more than 20% of an image to be filled with text, so most Facebook marketers choose to use simple stock photos as their featured images.

If you choose to use stock images, be sure that they’re relevant to the topic of your post. Also, be sure that the images you’re using aren’t copyrighted.

To avoid any copyright problems, I use sites like Pixabay and Unsplash to find relevant images for my ads. You can also use Facebook’s built-in stock image library to find safe and pre-formatted images.

Once you’ve got some nice visual content, it’s time to write a killer headline.

6. Write a headline.

As Neil Patel puts it, “The primary purpose of the headline is to get the first sentence read.” And he’s right; without a gripping headline, there’s no real incentive for readers to continue reading your post at all.

The headline of your ad is the very next thing that potential readers are going to see after your featured image. This makes it the perfect place to draw in users and earn their click.

Writing a headline for your Facebook ad is exactly like writing a title for your blog post. It should be short, catchy, and include some relevant keywords from your blog post. If you don’t already have a nice catchy headline, here are some things to keep in mind when writing it:

• Use “How To’s” and “How You’s” in your Facebook headline, followed by a common barrier that most people face when encountering a problem. (ex. “How You Can Promote Your Blog with Facebook Ads Without Having to Spend Money on A/B Testing”).
• Use numbers (ex. “5 Simple Ways…”)
• Keep it short.
• Make it as specific as possible. For instance, let’s say that you wrote about how your target audience can increase their search presence in Google. Instead of saying, “Learn How You Can Rank Higher on Google”, say something like, “Learn How You Can Increase Your Organic Traffic by 50% In Only 2 Months”.
• Try to convey a sense of urgency. You can do this by asking a question (ex. “Are you making these crucial mistakes when trying to promote your blog?”)

If you’re still stuck creating a catchy headline, feel free to use one of the many headline generators on the web. Just be sure that you refinie your results!

Lastly, include a nice call to action in the News Feed Link Description (NFLD) of your ad.

Your NFLD should be a combination of the main idea from your headline and a call to action. For instance, in the ad I created above, my NFLD read, “Click here to learn about how you can promote your blog…”.

Finish your ad off with a proper button that users can click to read your blog post, and that’s it! You’re ready to publish your post.

Yay!

After your post is published, be sure to keep a watchful eye over your metrics. Try your best to analyze what’s working with the advertisement and what’s not.

If you don’t have the budget right now to conduct A/B testing, don’t worry about it. Just focus on bettering your Facebook ad skills and learning, and you’ll be creating great ads in no time.

How have you used Facebook ads to promote your blog? Do you have any useful tips for other bloggers trying to use this platform? Let me know in the comments!

The post How You Can Use Facebook Ads to Promote Your Blog appeared first on GetResponse Blog – Online Marketing Tips.