Facebook Tip Of The Day: Page Targeting!

Aequitas

New member
Feb 19, 2007
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Canada
Note: What I'm going to post is not revolutionary or special or even worth reading to most people here so go fuck yourself if you read this and tell me you've just wasted 10 minutes of your life :cool:

This small little tip is about Facebook Page targeting. Lots of people have Facebook Fan Pages which they are using to promote products and services but how can we leverage this for our affiliate marketing purposes? More specifically how can I generate quality leads to a particular offer using Facebook Pages and have that traffic targeted?

This is best illustrated using an example and I'm going to use something from the past because I kick myself every day of the year since I overlooked at how much cash I could of brought in if I was not such a dumb fuck.

First find what you think is going to be a somewhat popular product to promote, find something that you think the affiliate networks will eventually pick up or something closely related to what the networks are already running.

For this example lets say that product is the iPhone (Yes I could have killed this in the past but failed to execute due to stupidity and being otherwise preoccupied by other work).

Before all the affiliate buzz about the iPhone and before the networks picked up iPhone offers, the iPhone was announced during one of the infamous Apple conferences, which means the second you hear about a potentially popular product you get to work on this and you DON'T WAIT, not even for 10 minutes, don't go grab a coffee, don't go for a smoke, don't leave the computer until you've at least thought about a game-plan to promote the product or service.

Anyway take your product idea (The iPhone in our case) and run over to Facebook and setup a Facebook fan page around that product. Now this is the important part, DO NOT DESTROY your Facebook page by immediately trying to sell to potential users. Users don't like advertisements, they don't like to be sold to on Social Networks, if you do this you will FAIL (Not always but yeah you'll fail more then you will succeed).

Anyway once you have your Fan Page created, start posting QUALITY images, news, and information around that product, try to post any type of content that will generate a buzz on your page, engage your potential readers, ask them questions, ask them what they think, ask them for their opinions, get them engaged and interacting with your page.

Now send this page to your friends if you think they'll like it and go over to your Facebook Ads account and spend $50 or $100 (Doesn't have to be much) and promote your Facebook Page, make your ad engaging as well, at this point your call to action is "LIKE MY PAGE".

Your only goal at this point is to have users LIKE and ENGAGE with your Facebook page, your not trying to sell them on anything. Now let this take hold over the next couple of weeks and continue to post news, information, videos, and images about the upcoming product.

Also I forgot to mention that the Facebook page traffic can come from anywhere at the start but try to gain as many likes from the type of traffic you think the networks will allow. For instance the iPhone offers when they first came our were mainly for Canada and the US, with some UK offers coming in later and then Australia, Germany, ect....

Anyway now comes the time sensitive aspect. At this point you have probably had at least a month or two to promote your page and gain your likes and engage people on your page before the offers hit the networks and before the product hits stores.

Now the second the product hits the networks or when they go up for sale, what you do is this. You write another post saying hey XXX company is offering people a free iPhone check this shit out, its insane and sweet and bla bla bla, make your message appear to be informational and not so "Click here buy this and make me money" type of thing.

Now sit back and roll in the bucks from this Fan page, rinse and repeat and your now a winner on the Social Networking websites. (Keep reading). Ok you may be asking "But Aequitas how do we separate the US traffic from the Canada traffic?".

That is a good question, because since our page has mixed traffic we don't want to send Canadian traffic to a US offer, that just won't work, they will be re-directed to something else that doesn't convert.

Just after you write out (or even before you write out) your promotional message on your fan-page (the one that sends them to the affiliate offer) you save the message and you duplicate it across all countries, changing your links for each.

For instance you may have an affiliate link for Canadian traffic, US traffic, and UK traffic. Make 3 copies of your message and switch out each link for the traffic sources, so the first message will have your Canadian link, second will have your US link, and third will have your UK link (IMPORTANT: Don't get these messages mixed up, I've done that before, it sucks trust me, shit hits the fan and your neighbors will call the cops cause all they'll hear coming out of your house for the next few hours is "YOU MOTHER FUCKER, FUCK, SHIT, ASSHOLE" ).

Now that you have your three messages you take the first message with the Canadian link paste it into the status update box and just before you click "Share" look for the little drop down right beside it, select "Customize" from this drop down list and a input text box will appear that says "Location" and below that one it says "Language", in the first box type in "Canada" and then "English" as the language and click Okay, now share your message.

Rinse and Repeat for all of your messages, what this will do is show your Affiliate link only to the Canadian traffic on the page, and it will only show your US affiliate link to the US traffic on your page. Now your affiliate links are correctly targeted.

And I'm tired of typing so this post is over, unless you have questions about a few things I have left out, feel free to ask away and I'll share my knowledge as best I can with ya. Anything from "Why Don't You Sell To Facebook Users Right Off The Bat?" to "Why the fuck did you make me read this asshole?".
 


Not heavy in FB marketing but appreciate the post.

Yeah I was heavy into Facebook marketing awhile back, then my ambition with it trickled down to nothing over the last few months, but now the ambition is coming back to me again. I hate Facebook for that, I always at first love what they offer and I learn about it, test it, use it, then something happens and I don't look at it for awhile and then I jump back in haha.
 
+Rep for that drop down text trick.

My biggest concern would be that apple is just going to aggressively take control of all of these fanpages (especially if they are big and you start pushing these offers).

Also do you watch the updates like a hawk to remove any people from saying retarded stuff like "DON'T CLICK IT LOL"
 
I WOULD HAVE wasted some precious moments of my life if I didn't read about that nice little targetting tip. I was thinking of redirecting based on IP from a lander but that tip saves a nice chunk of code. Just started getting my feet wet with FB traffic and could use all the knowledgeable tips I can get. Keep em coming!
 
When someone likes your fan page does Facebook tell all their friends that they liked it? How exactly does people 'liking' the fan page benefit the Affiliate?
 
When someone likes your fan page does Facebook tell all their friends that they liked it? How exactly does people 'liking' the fan page benefit the Affiliate?


yes it shows up on their newsfeed and under the ads it shows which of their friends like them. also,i believe the ads that are liked get preferential treatment
 
Couldn't you just post one link that goes to a geo-redirect that you host? Seems a lot easier than you're X posts for X countries.

Otherwise, good writeup.
 
My biggest concern would be that apple is just going to aggressively take control of all of these fanpages (especially if they are big and you start pushing these offers).

Yeah at the moment I don't actually promote anything by Apple or purchase any Apple products because I hate what they do to the developers, they are running a dictatorship (I respect them as a company but hate most of their tactics and attitude towards developers), I just used the iPhone as an example because of how popular it was.

Also do you watch the updates like a hawk to remove any people from saying retarded stuff like "DON'T CLICK IT LOL"

Not really no, if you do it correctly by the time anyone reports back you'll have converted the large majority of your traffic, converting the traffic for some of this stuff is very time sensitive so even if you did want to watch the comments that say "Don't Click" you'd only have to keep an eye out for them during a certain time frame, otherwise just let the conversation develop naturally.

Couldn't you just post one link that goes to a geo-redirect that you host? Seems a lot easier than you're X posts for X countries. Otherwise, good writeup.

LoL and I call myself a programmer, yeah that would make much more sense, don't know what I was thinking on that part. Well actually it makes more sense to do it the way I posted above for people who don't know how to program and who don't want to spend the money to have a little script created for them.

However if you know how to geo-redirect then posting your own script may be easier to manage and it may give your link some authority, well not so much authority, you can cloak your raw affiliate link using Bit.ly before posting it.

When someone likes your fan page does Facebook tell all their friends that they liked it? How exactly does people 'liking' the fan page benefit the Affiliate?

As Constantin mentioned there are a few ways "Liking" a page benefits the affiliate. First off if you like a page and that page makes a post it will show up in their newsfeed, its actually one of the ways I personally keep up with all the posts Mashable makes, I simply like their page and use my newsfeed to see the information.

Secondly when you click a "Like" button on a page it makes a small post on your Facebook wall saying "USER_A likes BLA BLA BLA" and if enough people from the same connections like the page it will show in the newsfeed of friends.

Let me expand upon that for a second, If I like a page and X number of my friends also like that page, eventually Facebook will automatically make a post in my friends newsfeeds who haven't yet liked that page, it will say something like "Adam, Bob, Margret, And Lilly Like XYZ" with links back to the page.

Finally I want to mention that the reason why your posting quality engaging content and not trying to initially convert the user is to gain trust, if you find a product to promote early enough you can have a year to build up your reputation with your followers, continuously engaging them and talking to them.

That way when the networks pick up the product or similar product, a large majority of your followers will take action based upon the trust you've developed.

Now there are two things to watch out for when you post an affiliate link, the first is you have to decide if the offer will be accepted by your followers, if it is and they like the offer, than you can re-convert them ect... until they hate you, in which case you just kill the page and move on. There is lots of ways to convert the traffic, but it all boils down to building that relationship and having your fans trust your word, if you can accomplish that, your golden.

A final note I want to say is that their will eventually be something called FBO, that translates into "Facebook Optimization" or it probably won't be called that but it will be something similar. By this I mean how do you get your fan page to "Rank" higher when people are using the search feature? Well Facebook has already mentioned they take a lot of things into consideration, the first is how many fans it has, how fast it's gaining new fans, and most important factor is how "Engaging" your content is, each time you make a post how many people are commenting on it, ect...

To rank better with Facebook fan pages think of "Engagement" as "Backlinks", we all know how to rank better in Google, we need quality "Backlinks" and unique content. How do you rank better in Facebook? You create engaging content that gains comments, likes, fan submitted information (photos, videos, discussions), ect....
 
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Yeah at the moment I don't actually promote anything by Apple or purchase any Apple products because I hate what they do to the developers, they are running a dictatorship (I respect them as a company but hate most of their tactics and attitude towards developers), I just used the iPhone as an example because of how popular it was.



Not really no, if you do it correctly by the time anyone reports back you'll have converted the large majority of your traffic, converting the traffic for some of this stuff is very time sensitive so even if you did want to watch the comments that say "Don't Click" you'd only have to keep an eye out for them during a certain time frame, otherwise just let the conversation develop naturally.



LoL and I call myself a programmer, yeah that would make much more sense, don't know what I was thinking on that part. Well actually it makes more sense to do it the way I posted above for people who don't know how to program and who don't want to spend the money to have a little script created for them.

However if you know how to geo-redirect then posting your own script may be easier to manage and it may give your link some authority, well not so much authority, you can cloak your raw affiliate link using Bit.ly before posting it.



As Constantin mentioned there are a few ways "Liking" a page benefits the affiliate. First off if you like a page and that page makes a post it will show up in their newsfeed, its actually one of the ways I personally keep up with all the posts Mashable makes, I simply like their page and use my newsfeed to see the information.

Secondly when you click a "Like" button on a page it makes a small post on your Facebook wall saying "USER_A likes BLA BLA BLA" and if enough people from the same connections like the page it will show in the newsfeed of friends.

Let me expand upon that for a second, If I like a page and X number of my friends also like that page, eventually Facebook will automatically make a post in my friends newsfeeds who haven't yet liked that page, it will say something like "Adam, Bob, Margret, And Lilly Like XYZ" with links back to the page.

Finally I want to mention that the reason why your posting quality engaging content and not trying to initially convert the user is to gain trust, if you find a product to promote early enough you can have a year to build up your reputation with your followers, continuously engaging them and talking to them.

That way when the networks pick up the product or similar product, a large majority of your followers will take action based upon the trust you've developed.

Now there are two things to watch out for when you post an affiliate link, the first is you have to decide if the offer will be accepted by your followers, if it is and they like the offer, than you can re-convert them ect... until they hate you, in which case you just kill the page and move on. There is lots of ways to convert the traffic, but it all boils down to building that relationship and having your fans trust your word, if you can accomplish that, your golden.

A final note I want to say is that their will eventually be something called FBO, that translates into "Facebook Optimization" or it probably won't be called that but it will be something similar. By this I mean how do you get your fan page to "Rank" higher when people are using the search feature? Well Facebook has already mentioned they take a lot of things into consideration, the first is how many fans it has, how fast it's gaining new fans, and most important factor is how "Engaging" your content is, each time you make a post how many people are commenting on it, ect...

To rank better with Facebook fan pages think of "Engagement" as "Backlinks", we all know how to rank better in Google, we need quality "Backlinks" and unique content. How do you rank better in Facebook? You create engaging content that gains comments, likes, fan submitted information (photos, videos, discussions), ect....

+rep -- Thanks for the detailed reply it's very helpful
 
+Rep for drop down and other tips

my only concern is FB identifying this as "affiliate" page and slapping a lawsuit just like it happened with maxbounty and other people. I know they were directly fucking with apps and shit and auto-spamming friends but i just hope FB is not watching around the pages.
 
I tried to do similar thing and it worked for a while but FB suspended my admin access of that FB page because some users flagged my "ads" post
 
I suppose you could also add an opt in to your page to get their emails too right, another way which you could blast them with aff links
 
I suppose you could also add an opt in to your page to get their emails too right, another way which you could blast them with aff links

using FBML i guess? but 100% sure to get slapped by FB, they wont like you collecting any data off the pages especially email. But this could be goldmine if u are able to collect the emails
 
U definitely can do it. I have seen it done nicely with FBML templates. But Facebook is upgrading their pages now to make them more like personal ones and I am not sure if that would work so well anymore.
 
Just started a page on the basis of your theory, started a CPM advertising campaign to get it started with some "Likes". I have spent $0.63 so far had 5000 impressions, 14 clicks and 7 Likes. Pretty impressive.

Thanks for the golden tip. + Rep
 
would you make the page using your main FB advertising account? If so if FB was to take down your page due to the aff links will this effect your advertising account also?

thanks.