Facebook Education from the Facebook Queen
Mari Smith, CEO of Mari Smith International, Inc. author of “The New Relationship Marketing” and co-author of “Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day,” is known as the Facebook Queen. She is the lead instructor on Facebook’s new Boost Your Business events for small businesses, the first of which is happening in San Diego on June 4th.
Mari is thrilled that Facebook is providing more opportunities for education to small businesses: “One of things that has really heartened me this year with Facebook is that they’re putting much more emphasis on education and customer service. Neither of which have been very strong in the past.”
But Mari would be happy to see even more. From the user perspective, a lot of individuals don’t know even half of the features they have at their fingertips. And from the professional side, it’s a challenge to keep up with Facebook’s changes and additions.
“For those of us in the social media profession, it seems that the onus is on us to quickly figure out what the changes are and translate that into what does it mean to the business user. What actions should they take, and then disseminate that information in a timely manner. Quite frankly, it’s a lot of work. It would just be easier if we had something much more clear coming from Facebook.”
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. When folks from Facebook try to explain how to make the best use of their ads, they’re too close to the product to translate conversion pixels and retargeting pixels into information that the average marketer can understand.
That’s where Mari comes in. She fell in love with Facebook in 2007 and has been passionately keeping tabs on it (and utilizing it for her business) ever since. “Throughout my career, my various different jobs over the decades, there have been these two predominant themes: my love of people, and my love of technology.”
For Mari, social media is the perfect industry for her skill sets and interests.
No Excuses, It’s Time to Create Video
“I’m all for video and I’ve actually seen reports that Zuckerberg and his crew are saying, ‘We will reach a point where Facebook will be 100% video.’ I think they’re trying to take over TV.”
As a thought leader in her field, it’s no surprise that Mari advises her clients and followers to start using video in their content marketing strategy. It can be intimidating at first, but with so many easy-to-use tools available to create video content, there’s no excuse. Mari rattles off a few off the top of her head:
“Don’t allow yourself to get stopped with trying to eat the whole elephant at once. Look at ways that you can create little short videos that are photo montages, video montages, or screencasts.” (highlight to tweet)
Despite all this video talk, Mari is quick to point out you need a mix of content (Facebook hasn’t taken over TV yet). You still need short and long written content, images, and audio content. But native video on Facebook gets top organic reach over everything else (photos, statuses, and links) so you’ve got to get on board to get your company out in front of your audience organically.
Fun Fact
Back in the day, Mari used to be a professional cake decorator. Who knew? Here’s a great montage of some photos from her decorating days:
See you next week!
How Mari Smith Makes Facebook Work Wonders
from Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting http://ift.tt/1FoPJjc
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