Graph Search is an eye-opener all right. Now I can find pictures a specific friend has liked, or places they’ve recently traveled and checked in to.

For those of you who are concerned about your privacy, you have the ability to change those settings on your Facebook account. Perhaps you should take a closer look at your “friends” list. Graph Search didn’t change any settings, it just gave people easier access to information they already had access to.

Now that the general public has been addressed, I’ll move on to discussing how Graph Search will impact Facebook marketers. In order to cross that bridge, however, we must first delve into what exactly what Graph Search is — how it operates, and how to take advantage of its features.

What Is Graph Search?

Graph Search helps Facebook users to develop connections based on people’s interests and opinions. Right now the search is limited to your friends and their friends (friends of friends). If you are familiar with the game “6 Degrees of Separation” then we’re going 2 levels deep. Will Graph Search expand past the second level? We’ll have to wait and see!

As of right now, Graph Search displays 12 results per page, and searches can include over 39 criteria. These are divided up into several categories:

• Basic Info (name, gender, etc.)
• Work and Education (employer, position, etc.)
• Likes and Interests (likes, following, etc.)
• Photos and Videos (tagged in, commented on, etc.)
• Living (birth year, current city, etc.)
• Relationship and Family (relationship to, married to, etc.)

Yes, there are a lot of et cetera’s in there! To give you some more information on how to think in terms of Graph Search, Facebook also recommended these following searches to me when I did a broad search of my friends:

• Photos of these people
• These people’s friends
• Places where they’ve worked
• Places where they’ve studied
• Videos of these people
• Landmarks they’ve visited
• Languages they speak
• Places they’ve lived
• Places they’re from
• Activities they like
• These people groups

One search that didn’t make it onto the suggestion list was “Pages liked by these people”. Yes, you can search for that. Maybe it’s time to think about your Fan Page. Is it ready to be searchable? Let’s get you ready to hit the ground running when Graph Search goes public.

#1 Preparing For Graph Search

Some of your posts, ads, or offers already appear in people’s feeds. We already know that friends of friends see what someone has liked recently, like a page or a photo. We’re used to being discovered or stumbled upon through the News Feed, and have had some moderate success with it already. Search is a different beast though, and requires a closer look at what is behind your Fan Page. Specifically, the About section.

Facebook is now operating as a search engine. Like Google, it will index certain parts of your profile and Fan Page that have relavent information. Make sure that your Fan Page’s About section is accurate. Fill in as many criteria as you can, and don’t try to make your Fan Page something it is not. Get 10,000 Fans is not a restaurant.

I believe one of the more important sections will be the description of your Fan Page. Fill this area with the keywords that you are targeting, but do it naturally. We’re not certain how strict Facebook’s Graph Search algorithm is yet regarding nonsense keyword stacking, but it is generally better to err on the side of caution. Businesses got hurt by Google’s Panda and Penguin updates. Let’s not have another incident like that.

#2 Pictures Are Even More Important

Photos and other media are popular methods for getting engagement and shares on Facebook. Graph Search brings another some more metrics to the table – tags, comments, and locations.

What can you do as a Fan Page owner? Start tagging your pictures and video. Tag yourself in it, tag your coworkers in it, tag whoever wants to be tagged in it. Don’t stop there though. Put in the location of where the photo or video took place. You want to add as many searchable terms and metrics to your content as possible.

Now on the flip side, I wouldn’t recommend you start tagging anyone and everyone. Will you grow your searchable network? Sure, but you’ll also lose fans and credibility by using a tactic we refer to as “spam”. People don’t appreciate that, and it’s not worth sacrificing your brand image to be able to be searched by more people.

A thought occurred to me while writing this – what about contests that involve tagging yourself and commenting? No. You can’t do that. It violates the Facebook guidelines. The only thing contests are able to accomplish are getting you “likes”, or having someone check-in at your establishment. That brings us to my next point.

#3 Brick And Mortar, Pros And Cons

Are check-in’s searchable in Graph Search? You bet. Search in general is also becoming more localized. It’s been reported that 20% of Google searches now show local intent, while 40% of mobile searches are local. Are you taking advantage of these social signals?

Allow me to follow Google’s model briefly. They currently have an app on Google+ called Local, allowing its users to search for businesses and provide reviews. I could see Facebook implementing something similar into their new search capability. If they do, your business will be dependent on reviews as well. Be sure to monitor your reviews and take into consideration how you will handle a negative one.

#4 The Foreseeable Future Of Graph Search

As you’ve read above, I have already alluded to Facebook incorporating a review feature that is searchable in Graph Search. Something else that Facebook itself has teased at is post searching. As of right now, you cannot search for keywords or content located within a post. If you take a peek at the picture above, I believe that feature will be enabled soon.

Some people have been predicting that Graph Search will be the downfall of dating sites and businesses of that nature. Personally, I think that’s a bit of an overstatement. Chances are when Graph Search goes live to the pubic people are going to be making some privacy changes, probably involving pictures and things of a more private nature. I don’t think Fan Pages they’ve liked, commented, or otherwise interacted with will be on the list of concern.

In its infancy, Graph Search does bring some concerns and opportunities to light.

Conclusion

From what we have learned so far about Facebook’s Graph Search, we can see some adjustments that need to be made as marketers. In order to dominate search results, we have to take advantage of the About section of our Fan Pages and fill it in appropriately. Photos and tagging become more important, as does the “like” in general.

Keep your eyes open for updates as more features are unlocked. It will be fun seeing where Facebook decides to take its next step.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to double check my privacy settings and update our Fan Page.

Ask The Entrepreneurs is a regular series where members of those involved in the Young Entrepreneur Council are asked a single question that aims to help Lifehack readers level up their own lives, whether in a area of management, communication, business or life in general. Here’s the question posed in this edition of Ask The Entrepreneurs:

What is one financial resolution that all aspiring entrepreneurs should make for themselves in 2013?

1. Track Your Monthly Income and Expenses

This might seem a little too basic, but if you’re not doing at least some bookkeeping on a regular basis, you don’t have your pulse on your business’ numbers. Being able to look at how much money came in and went out in one month is crucial to any startup or aspiring entrepreneur. Even if you’re not bringing much in, you need to know that.

- Nathalie Lussier, The Website Checkup Tool

2. Increase Your Rate of Savings

Becoming an entrepreneur can be a scary proposition, and one factor that keeps many people from making that leap is finances. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, then it can be hard to make those tough decisions that may be rough in the short term, but very beneficial in the long term. Once you answer how you’re going to eat and where your’e going to live, you can then focus on your business.

- Lawrence Watkins, Great Black Speakers

3. Can You Really Live on Ramen?

It’s easy to assume that if you quit the high-paying day job, your expenses will decline in tandem with your income. In reality, that’s a lot harder after you’re used to nicer meals, vacation travel, etc.

Before you quit your job, figure out what you can really live on for two months and test your ability to stick to that budget. It’s a great way to see if you’ll be happy living on ramen noodles.

- Erik Severinghaus, SimpleRelevance

4. Take an Accounting Class

Even if you never have to do any accounting work at any company you ever start, understanding the basics of accounting will be very useful. Just being able to read accounting reports may save your bacon if there’s a potential issue in your company that your accounting software or a human accountant haven’t managed to pick up on.

- Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

5. Create a Personal Budget

Sometimes, amidst all the startup craziness, entrepreneurs forget to plan and organize their own finances at all. Then, all of a sudden, you’ve ordered expensive sushi delivery for dinner every night and the numbers keep stacking up. Take some time over the holidays to plan out your own budget.

- Derek Flanzraich, Greatist

SEE ALSO: Ask the Entrepreneurs: 11 Bloggers to Follow for Lifestyle and Productivity Tips

6. Join the Peer Economy

The Peer Economy, companies that help you buy, sell, or transact with your peers (think eBay, Etsy, Airbnb, Getaround, Taskrabbit, Zaarly, Odesk or dozens others), is a great way to make money or save money. So participate—either by renting your couch out or staying in an Airbnb place when you travel; finding a developer or selling your services on Elance; or more. But just participate.

- Eric Koester, Zaarly

7. Give Yourself Permission to Fail

Every aspiring entrepreneur should give themselves permission to fail in 2013 because the greatest obstacle that every entrepreneur must (and always will) encounter is fear; especially fear of uncertainty and the unknown. When you give yourself permission to fail—financially or otherwise—you really give yourself permission to try in the first place.

- Dave Ursillo, The Literati Writers

8. Pay Down Debt

If you have personal debt, try to dramatically reduce or ideally eliminate it prior to starting your business. Having lower recurring expenses will give you more freedom to take risks as you build your company.

- Elizabeth Saunders, Real Life E®

9. Real-Time Visibility

Establish a system to access financial data about your company’s performance on demand and in as close to real-time as possible. This will allow you to feel highly in tune with business growth and tackle challenges as early on as possible.

- Robert J. Moore, RJMetrics

10. Launch Their Company

Too many people network, brainstorm and whiteboard continuously and just keep adding ideas and layers to their concept. Aspiring entrepreneurs need to draw a line and say “this is our MVP and now we will build it.” Sitting on an idea does not help you or make you any money but building your idea into a product or business will help you validate it and test the marketplace.

- Aron Schoenfeld, Do It In Person LLC

11. Find Great Clients

Improve profit through better clients. Having great clients really does matter with overall happiness of a company. Make an effort to improve profits by taking on the right clients, not just more clients.

- John Hall, Digital Talent Agents

12. Keep More of the Money You Make

Keep more of the money you make! Strive to make sure that your costs are under control, make customers happier, and focus on stimulating repeat purchases from new customers. That doesn’t mean becoming a penny-pincher, but if you have costs that aren’t advancing your bottom line, cut them out! A business is only as strong as the money it keeps at the end of the year.

- Brian Moran, Get 10,000 Fans

From failing to supervise the sales team to being just a little too feedback-happy, these young entrepreneurs learned some tough lessons about running a start-up in 2012.

1. Moving Too Quickly

Hiring too many people has been both the biggest mistake and the biggest success for us this year. We’ve hired almost two dozen people, and that expansion has been difficult for us. We’ve lacked the experienced people at the top to help train our new recruits. If I were to do it again, I would have hired fewer people and spent more time getting them running smoothly.
– Liam Martin, Staff.com

2. Teaching Pigs to Fly

I mistakenly attempted to get my CFOs to take an active role in business development. When this experiment fell flat, I realized that people have core strengths and competencies and should be assigned roles and responsibilities accordingly. See your employee’s true values and help them to work to their potential–don’t try to make them into something they’re not.
– David Ehrenberg, Early Growth Financial Services

3. Not Enough Personal Time

My biggest mistake was not scheduling enough personal time. Entrepreneurs are “on” 24/7; the only way to overcome that is to schedule time for yourself. This is different from time spent with family, friends, or other commitments. Next year, I’ll block time for my entrepreneurial sanity.
– Matt Wilson, Under30Media

4. Feedback Burnout

After going through the past six months collecting tons of user feedback, we faced an ever-growing desire to please people who were suggesting things for us to incorporate to make our platform better. Ultimately, we became unfocused, and had to learn the difference between unhelpful and helpful feedback in order to solve our core problems.
– Stacey Ferreira, MySocialCloud

5. Not Sharing Enough With the Team

I aim to be transparent with my team to the point of feeling uncomfortable about it. Since we’re so small and what we’re doing is so important, believe it’s key to express that trust. This year, I failed to share my general thoughts on the future a few times, so I’ve learned to be more proactive. We’re all in this together–and I need their help!
– Derek Flanzraich, Greatist

6. Hiring Woes

We hired a candidate for a senior management position that we weren’t yet in a position to fully leverage. We learned that hiring for senior roles requires more scrutiny than entry-level positions, and are now trying to fill the position with a much more informed perspective on what’s required.
– Robert J. Moore, RJMetrics

7. Lack of Sales Goals

My biggest mistake this year was to try to lead a sales team with minimal supervision and no weekly goals set. I tried this for a few months and quickly found out that it does not work. The biggest lesson for me here was to really understand human nature. More often than not, what leads people to failure is the lack of initial planning and goal-setting.
– Felix Lluberes, Position Logic

8. Don’t Hire Entrepreneurs

I learned to never hire other entrepreneurs. Partner with them, don’t hire them. It never ends well in the long run. They want the same thing you do.
– Peter Nguyen, Literati Institute 

9. Not Controlling Our Own Operations

I learned the importance of controlling your own operations. When you depend too strongly on a service or tool, you are gambling your business. We had a customer-management tool that simply decided we were breaking its terms of service and it banned our account temporarily. Controlling your own operations is worth the time and money invested.
– Brian Moran, Get 10,000 Fans 

10. Forgetting a Budget Buffer

One major mistake that I faced this year was simply being too zealous with projections and budgeting the company on that. What I have learned from that is to budget at least 30% less than that in order to have a buffer. It is always better to budget and operate the company with less than what you believe you will generate.
– Adam DeGraide, Astonish

What Ads are most effective?
How many people are actually becoming customers because of an ad?
Is my niche receptive to Sponsored Stories or Facebook Offers?

It becomes tedious to track all of these things at once. Myself and my employees wanted a system designed to make this whole process easier.

Well it’s here – FBConversions.

Find The Money Makers

With FBConversions you can track what Ads, Sponsored Stories, Facebook Offers, or Status Updates are successful.

What defines success? Opt-ins to an email list. Customers. Sales. You pick the goal.

With this tool we were able to easily look at our strategy in-depth and find out what type of content worked best for our niche. More importantly, we were able to weed out the types of strategies that had poor results.

This not only saves us money on wasted Ads, but gives us more time to focus on what actually works.

This is all accomplished in 3 easy steps.

#1 Add The Tracking Script

In order for FBConversions to work properly, a snippet of code has to be inserted into the footer of the websites you want to track. If you’re not tech-savvy, that’s ok. We made some great instructional videos to guide you through the process.

Don’t worry, the script won’t be visible or anything like that. It will be tucked away, ready to track conversions!

Now for the fun part.

#2 Create Campaigns

Ideally, you should make a campaign for every Ad, Post, Offer, or Sponsored Story you make. That being said, try to give them specific names – we wouldn’t want you to get mixed up about what campaign was what!

Each campaign can track the clicks, conversions, and conversion percentage of whatever method you have used to direct visitors to your website.

In order to track conversions, we need to talk about our last step. Goals.

#3 Set Up Goals

Goals are the where you want the user to end up. It can be an email opt-in, a sale, or anything in between.

Each goal requires a separate URL. These can be landing pages, thank you pages, opt-in forms, or blog posts for example.

Now that you have an idea how to set up this conversion tool (it is really easy!) let’s take a look at some scenarios.

The Big Picture

Let’s pretend we have a new product we’d like to drive traffic to.

We have set up several campaigns to cover our various Ads, Sponsored Stories, and Posts, and we want to know what method gets the best results. By setting a goal to a the thank you page of the product we can track how many people clicked the link, went through the sales funnel, and actually purchased the product.

We can also split-test various Ad copy, images, or post format to find out what is most effective.

Social media is constantly shifting. Tactics that have worked for you in the past may not be as effective as they once were. Alternatively, tactics and strategies that you once dismissed may end up working better than you could imagine!

That’s why we created FBConversions.

As marketers, we needed to be able to track and analyze our efforts to maximize our productivity.

And frankly, I really like this tool!

I’m sure some of you had a great year. Others, I’m sure you feel it could have gone better.

With the dawn of a new year, some of us like to reevaluate our various marketing strategies that we have (or have not!) followed.

Let’s take a minute to assess what we ourselves could have done better, be it a better work ethic or make the bed in the morning. They say that making your bed in the morning gives you a sense of control right when you get up.

Ok. Now let’s talk about some ways that we can improve our Facebook presence.

#1 Stay Positive And Thankful

While establishing ourselves or our Fan Page online, it is easy to lose sight of what’s important – people aren’t just numbers.

I have become thankful for any engagement or interaction I receive. Negative feedback, positive feedback, and spammy Facebook comments are signs of people being social. People taking time out of their day to pay attention to you.

It means that people are seeing your content. It means that you are doing something right.

Turning the negatives into positives is a different matter, but for starters you can say “Thank you” in your head as you delete spam or reply to a question or comment.

#2 Make Something Helpful And Share It

Each of you have something you excel at. Something that you’re knowledgeable in. Something you’re able to give others advice about. Chances are it revolves around your business.

Well this year, try to give more.

Infographics are relatively easy to make, and allow you to pass some helpful information along the social media network. People are more willing to share something that has helped them. Why? Because they know it will help others. Some may even do it for the recognition. That’s besides the point though, what matters is how you have the helpful content set up.

Host it on a website. Bam! Free traffic to your blog.

If it’s an infographic or pdf, put clickable icons in it. Send the traffic to a website.

If you’re looking to capture emails or drive up sales, have the link send them to the respective page.

#3 Find Out What Your Customers Need

That’s right. Ask your customers what they need, then make it!

Not only will this give your customers and clients exactly what they want, it will give you another product to sell!

This ties in to getting feedback. Perhaps this segment would be more aptly titled “Listen”. In 2013, try to listen more. Keep an open mind and don’t be afraid to try something new. Heck, you may even stumble across the next groundbreaking marketing tactic or trend.

Your customers are your biggest asset. They are what keeps you in business! For instance: we had a lot of requests for a tool to track various Facebook metrics. All of these requests culminated in a new product that we will be releasing soon.

Take advantage of what your customers want.

#4 Plan! Organize!

This is definitely an area that business can always put more effort into.

Just like a quick outline of an agenda will keep your meetings focused, an outline of your marketing campaign strategy will keep your business moving in the direction you want. Hopefully the right one!

Here are some strategies you may want to put into your 2013 plan for Facebook:

• Mobile ads
• More sponsored stories
• Infographics
• Video
• Contests

The beginning of a new year is when many businesses decide it’s time to try something new. Something different.

Keep your eyes open for the new marketing trends of 2013, and plan to implement a different aspect to your strategy. Seriously though, making a quick outline with specific times for your meetings helps a lot!

#5 Engage More

I know I’ve shared this point on our blog before. I remember typing it. Some people just need to be reminded, or hear something a different way, so I’ll refresh their memory.

Facebook is a social network. Surprise! Treat it as such!

When people interact or provide engagement on a photo or something you’ve shared on your Fan Page, give it right back to them.

Comment back. Like what they said. Provide some sort of interaction.

This has multiple benefits. It shows people that there is someone behind the Fan Page. It also will inspire more people to interact, and can spark a nice conversation, but don’t watch your Facebook posts all day, there are other tasks that are better suited for you and your employee’s time.

Just keep tabs on the post (or whatever you share) for a couple minutes. Generally the most engagement comes when a post first comes out. Thank you EdgeRank algorithm.

Conclusion

A new year, a new outlook on business.

Use this opportunity to take a serious look at how you run your business, the goals you would like to accomplish this year, and the steps to complete them.

Don’t be hesitant to try something new. Be creative. Be open-minded. Be limitless.

Well, by writing this post I’ve inspired myself. Hopefully you will get a similar feeling from it!

Have a great and successful 2013 everyone.

What could possibly be bad about scaling up your startup? If you’re thinking about growth because the demand is there, you’re clearly doing something right.

But a rush to ramp up too soon can lead to serious growing pains, especially in the human resources and accounting departments. We asked 10 entrepreneurs in the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to share their own experiences with scale – and their best advice for founders about to embark on a big push in the new year.

1. Scale Remotely

The biggest problem with scaling is you take on commitments. Commitments for offices, technology, employees and any number of assets that can slow you down and bleed your bank account. A great option is remote employment. At Staff.com, we run a team of more than 50 employees from 9 different countries; our employees are more efficient than local ones and we don’t have commitments like offices, payroll or the bureaucratic headaches that local employees produce. We still have some local employees, but each local worker is augmented by remote ones. This relationship produces incredibly efficient employees at a fraction of the cost. - Liam Martin, Staff.com

2. Spend Money On The Best People

Whether you’re selling a product or service, maintaining quality during periods of quick scaling is hard. At Pandemic Labs, we experienced this in both our agency business and our software platform. Our solution is in our people. When your business is moving along at a steady, manageable pace, you might not see the value of hiring someone for $90,000 when you can fill that position with someone for $40,000. But there’s a big reason, and you’ll see it when business ramps up. A-level people cost more, but they’ll be able to keep a steady hand on the wheel with you in situations where other companies would crumble under the speed of their own growth. The best people will feel expensive at first, but a team of great people can control a train that would otherwise fly off the tracks. - Matt Peters, Pandemic Labs

3. Understand What It Takes To Serve 10X The Customers

The biggest mistake startups can make when trying to scale a business is to not understand what it takes to support 10 customers versus 100 customers. As an entrepreneur, project all the resources you will need as you grow. Forecast how each of your key resources (i.e. staff, strategic leadership, infrastructure) will need to be expanded. Yodle scaled successfully because we invested in careful planning in order to be properly prepared for each juncture of growth. In this way, we achieved controlled growth – and this was the best way to manage additional costs and resources. - John Berkowitz,Yodle

4. Set Up Systems First

My company, RewardMe, is a digital loyalty platform for restaurants. Our success therefore depends on our ability to capture as much of the market as possible. Our initial 100 clients were in Northern California and it seemed like we were ready to scale: hire sales people across the country and implement as fast as possible. But the smartest decision we made was to delay scaling until we had all our systems and training manuals in place. When you bring people on board to scale sales, everything must be a no-brainer: they must know exactly how to get clients, how long it takes to close deals, how much to sell the product for, and the intricacies of the implementation process. Don’t scale until every single aspect from customer acquisition to implementation is a process. - Jun Loayza, Passport Peru

5. Premature Scaling Kills

There is no doubt about it – startups offer some amazing opportunities to exercise Computer Science and Systems Engineering knowledge. Engineering friends of mine regularly marvel at the amount of data companies like Google, Amazon and Netflix have to process, analyze and serve. Here’s the problem: This opportunity doesn’t exist for early-stage startups, because, by definition, they have no users or customers. Worrying about “scale” in the early days of your startup is simply a bad investment. You may not have even discovered whether a product or market is worth pursuing, but you will have already invested in scaling that pursuit. Startup founders have to develop a craft in rapid application prototyping. Scaling comes later. - Andrew Montalenti, Parse.ly

6. Listen To Your Customers

One of the best barometers for scaling should be customer satisfaction. If your customers are satisfied, you can scale as fast as you want. Typically, when something starts going wrong or you’re understaffed, your customers will tell you! When we started pushing hard toward the 7-figure mark in our first year, my brother/business partner was left managing customer support from his Gmail account. He was a senior in college, a starter on the baseball team, and working 50-60 hours each week. We knew something had to change, and that’s when we found a full-time customer support staff member. While Scott was doing all he could, I knew our customers were growing restless. Since then, I’ve been able to leverage Scott’s abilities, and our business has never been stronger. - Brian Moran, Get 10,000 Fans

7. Ride One Horse At A Time

When we started franchising our business, we expanded rather quickly, and it seemed logical to test out new service lines and launch new brands. However, we stretched ourselves thin and ended up over our heads in unfamiliar waters. Our core business suffered, and the new initiatives didn’t work. My advice: Focus on dominating the sandbox you’re already in before branching out. Make sure you have strong systems and resilient revenue streams. Run market tests and grow your business slowly so that every piece is sturdy, stable and cohesive. If you try to ride more than one horse at the same time, you’re going to fall off. - Nick Friedman, College Hunks Hauling Junk

8. Be Selective, Open Up Slowly

When we launched SaberBlast.com a year ago, it grew so fast that we couldn’t keep up with demand. Our clients would try to send out newsletters with 30,000 or 100,000+ subscribers on it – and either the server would blow up or the resulting traffic would kill us. It was embarrassing. With the recent relaunch of the service, not only have we upgraded our technology, but we’ve upgraded how we onboard clients. We actually have an application process and a waiting period. Then, once a month we open up Xnumber of new spots and email clients who are on the waiting list telling them they can sign-up. This way, by controlling demand and being selective about who we take on as clients, we’re controlling the risk of growing too fast without sacrificing the quality of how our service is delivered. - Matthew Ackerson, Saber Blast

9. Stay Focused On Cash Flow

The most dangerous problem with scaling too quickly is usually cash flow. I experienced that when building my second business when I was 19. We nearly hit our $1 million in revenue in the first few years, but as we got bigger clients, they required better payment terms. One missed payment from a big client could be disastrous, which is what happened. Cash flow is king in scaling up your business. Most entrepreneurs learn the hard way and this is definitely something that needs to be talked about more. - Peter Nguyen, Literati Institute

10. Estimate Growth, Then Divide By 2

As much as we love to dream about explosive growth and unyielding demand for our product or service, our passion and excitement may skew the truth about future projections. If you can estimate revenue for the next 12 months, take that number then divide by 2 – and plan your resources and expenses around that number instead. Case in point, I ordered 2,000 jerseys for my new sports business (we ran rec leagues for adults) based on lofty expectations about how may players would sign up to play. We had 75 people show up on opening day and for an entire year I did not know if I was running a sports business or a t-shirt business. Be modest in your expectations and seek outside help for an unbiased estimate. It is never a bad thing to sell out beyond capacity, it creates demand. - Steven Staley, Playbook Community

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Is your Facebook page lonely? Not getting the number of fans you’d hoped for? Don’t be discouraged! You have to start somewhere and it’s usually at the bottom. The good news is the only direction to go from there is up. When it comes to building an audience, a fan base, clientele, etc., it takes just the right type of marketing to bring in a good crowd.

Facebook, currently one of the most popular social media outlets, has become a superior marketing tool in our society. So, what drives traffic to one’s Facebook page? Posting on Facebook can pique one’s interest, but how do you know what is appropriate in a post and what is not? They say you attract more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. So, in order to be most attractive, we first have to figure out who the bees are (your audience), and then discern what is considered honey and what is considered vinegar.

#1 Are You as Funny as You Think You Are?

Humor is a great way to connect with your audience and to show a lighter side to your business. But, like beauty, humor is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes posts that we think are hilarious will absolutely flop on our page. And some posts that weren’t really intended to get a laugh end up just killing it.

Humor is always up to the audience. If you know your audience, then you’ll know what they find funny. And if you can’t make them laugh, you need to get to know your audience better! But never shy away from being funny, especially on Facebook where engagement means more traffic.

#2 Be Seriously, Serious

Just as humor can be honey to your bees, serious posts, including anything from holiday-themed posts, to trending topics in your market, can be just as valuable to your audience. Some of our best posts ever published have been about somber holidays like Veteran’s Day, September 11th, and the like. We never create these posts to be self-serving. We know how much our audience cares about these subjects and we approach them very seriously and respectfully, which I think is one of the reasons these posts do so well. Your audience is sure to recognize and appreciate that you have taken the time to learn their interests and are producing sincere, quality content based on that knowledge.

#3 Keep Your Personal Opinions Personal

No matter what topic or issue you’re trying to address, never pick sides. The worst thing you can do for your traffic is bash a certain political candidate, make a socially or racially charged statement, or even post about why your favorite sports team is better than the rest. That’s strong vinegar and is more likely to bring out some stingers.

If you’re running a Fan Page, you need to know your purpose. And more often than not, your true purpose has nothing to do with pop culture, an election, or sports. These are all examples of opinions better left for your personal profile. If you do post about these kinds of topics, make sure to stay in the middle of the road. Don’t get in shouting matches over irrelevant details on your public Fan Page because you want your opinion heard.

#4 Reuse, Recycle

As long as the content is relevant and beneficial to your audience, re-posting someone else’s content is an excellent way to draw attention to your page. If the content is valuable, your audience doesn’t care where it came from, so don’t be afraid to share it! People always want great information, but the truth is they don’t always want to find it on their own. If you’ve put in the work to locate the details, your audience will appreciate it and reap the benefits whether you’re the original author or not.

#5 Simply Be The Best

One of the number one goals we should all strive for in marketing is consistently providing the best information at exactly the right time. People would much rather have information served to them on a shiny silver platter than have to go digging around in dark corners to find it. The most valuable information can be provided by utilizing specific knowledge of your audience and the topics that are important to them, along with being purposeful in the manner in which the topic is delivered.

Facebook can be a fantastic tool for building an engaged audience as long as you put forth the effort to know your audience and make their time worthwhile. Be silly, be serious, be informative, but not opinionated. If you consistently provide premium content and deliver it appropriately, you will become the go-to resource every time the bees need more honey.

There are just so many options and a myriad of ways to accomplish a simple goal. It’s easy to lose sight of your goal.

It’s easy to lose focus.

Well, here of a list of things we all need to focus on to be successful.

#1 Fill Out Your Page Completely

As discussed in a previous post, one of the mistakes that plagues Facebook marketers is using an illegal cover photo.

I’ll stress this again. You cannot advertise your website or use call to actions in your cover photo. Why? Because Facebook has designated a specific place for that information — the about section.

About The About Section

Here you can enter the necessary information for a visitor to become a customer. Mission statement, company description, contact information, they’re all important.

Perhaps the most important of these input boxes is the “Short description” box. This is the box that appears directly below your cover photo, and if you keep the description short enough it’s the ideal place to put a website URL.

You can also grab a custom vanity URL, allowing easier access to your Fan Page.

Try to make it the same across the other social media sites for your company. YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest for example.

Addressing Multiple Locations

Here is where we run into a bit of a snag.

If you have a brick and mortar business, how do you account for having multiple locations represented by the same Fan Page?

Well there are two options: The easy route is simply list the location in your about section, the more worthwhile route is creating a whole new Fan Page for each location.

This is where tools like 5 Minute Fan Page are invaluable.

#2 Likes Do Not Equal Sales

Before I step on anyone’s toes, yes, Likes are important.

Likes build brand reliability and create this appealing aura of trust on Facebook.

But Likes don’t bring in profit. Plain and simple.

So yes, you should focus on getting Likes, but take it one step further — focus on engagement and generating revenue.

Engagement Is The Mediator

Once you get people engaging on your posts, that’s when you will pique their friend’s interest.

You see, engagement is the way to not only get Likes, but drive “warm” traffic to your Fan Page.

The kind of traffic that has a higher potential to become a customer than your run of the mill “cold” traffic.

So instead of focusing on Likes, aim a rung higher on the ladder. Go for engagement!

Mail, Mail, Mail

Ideally, at least according to our own personal business model, we are driving engagement to opt-in to our mailing list.

Likes –> Engagement –> Mailing List

Why is the mailing list our end goal? It’s a versatile tool we can use *gasp* outside of Facebook!

When we launch a new product or run a sale, we send it to the mailing list.

We can also use the mailing list to generate further engagement by sending them links to posts or pages we’d like to get engagement on.

#3 Watch Your Insights

Insights help you measure what types of posts give you the most engagement, as well as how well your Fan Page is doing in general.

One particular insight metric that is important is the Talking About This number.

This is basically your interaction meter displaying how many people are taking action around your Fan Page in a given week.

Some actions that factor into this metric are:

• Liking
• Commenting
• Sharing
• Answering a Facebook Question
• Checking-in
• Tagging in a photo
• Mentioning in a post

Those all look like ways people engage on your Fan Page to me!

Keep your eye on your talking about number. It should stay pretty consistant, but if it varies dramatically you either did something remarkably right or dreadfully wrong.

When the talking about number skyrockets, try you best to figure out what caused this jump in engagement. Was it a way you shared a photo? Were you running a contest or promoting a particular product? Did your post stand out from your general posting strategy in some way?

Conversely, these same questions can be asked if the talking about number dropped. Find out what you did wrong, and learn from it!

#4 Facebook Ads

If anything has helped us directly get revenue for our business, it’s Facebook Ads. And yes you will have to spend some money to make some money, but not much!

You just have to be smart about it. Start small, and then scale it up if it’s working.

We have plenty of help in dealing with Facebook Ads in our Facebook Ad Academy, but I’ll give you some pointers here.

There are a lot of different kinds of Facebook Ads and a lot of different ways to spend your budget unwisely. Here’s what I like to do.

I primarily stick with CPC ads. That means cost-per-click, and THAT means that I only spend money when visitors physically click my Ad links.

There are also two other forms of ads that I have in my bag of tricks. Let’s take a look at them.

Promoted Posts

These are somewhat new to the Facebook world. Somewhat.

Basically, you can take any post you have on the Fan Page and promote it for a specified amount of money.

Facebook will then show a specified amount of people the post following the various targeting options that you supplied.

This is NOT CPC, but by impression. An impression counts for anytime Facebook shows the ad or post to someone, whether they interact with it or not.

As always, start with a low budget and see if this method works for your fan base.

Facebook Offers

Offers are another relatively new way to promote your content on Facebook.

You can create special promotions for some of your products that you would like to showcase. This also is a good way to drive traffic to a website.

Once an offer is claimed, it shows up on their friend’s Timelines, allowing it to spread across the network. Neat huh?

Conclusion

Running a Facebook Fan Page can be pretty time consuming.

There are just so many variables to keep track of, and endless ways to accomplish a goal. It is SO easy to lose focus. I know because it happens to me every now and then.

Take these things to focus on to heart, and tell us what your current focus is.

Thanks again for reading!

In the process of discovering and highlighting the proper strategies, myself and other marketers had to make some mistakes.

Hey, mistakes are great as long as you learn from them!

Fortunately for you, I’ve compiled a list of the most common mistakes a Fan Page owner makes. Check them out!

#1 Illegal Cover Photo

Sometimes people are so excited about setting up their fan page that they forget to do some important homework — reading the Facebook cover photo guidelines.

Once you understand the rules, they’re fairly simple to follow.

Does it mean everyone follows them? No. In fact, some larger brands still tread a fine line with their cover photos.

Their choice, but frankly I don’t think it’s worth it. Let’s go over some of the rules that are most frequently violated:

• Cover Photos may not contain price or purchase information, such as “40% off,” “Download it at our website,” or “Free Sunglasses All Summer Long.”
• Cover Photos may not contain contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section.
• Cover Photos may not contain references to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or other Facebook site features.
• Cover photos may not contain calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”

As you can see, this limits the amount of direct marketing and promotion that can be done with a cover photo.

Instead of using these illegal tactics, try using a picture of one of your products. There is no rule about showcasing an image!

And for those of you who lack the image editing software required to do this, here is a program that will help you out.

Posting Failures

Posting on Facebook is how marketers usually generate engagement on their Fan Pages.

It also has room for some potential pitfalls.

Let’s take a look at some posting mistakes that Fan Pages have made in the past, and how to avoid them.

#2 Finding The Right Amount

Facebook suggests that when you first launch your Fan Page, start by posting once or twice a week.

Well, that’s bad advice. Every Fan Page’s market is different.

It is important to establish a relative idea to how often you should post based on the engagement received.

Do not flood your page with posts though! You can (and will) see an adverse effect of saturating your timeline with pictures and text.

Try to find the happy medium between those two points. It can take some time to find the right amount of posts per week, but once you have found it, try to stay close to that number.

The key take-away message here is don’t get excited and post too much, yet don’t be timid with posting either. Find that middle ground.

#3 Straying Off-Topic

Let me preface this point by saying it is ok to go off-topic. It’s why you go off-topic that matters.

It’s fine to diversify your posts. We do it simply to get engagement.

I posted a picture of some Thanksgiving cupcakes to say thank you to all of our fans and customers. In turn, they shared the photo and brought more visitors to our page.

I didn’t mention my website, product, or anything else related to marketing, but it got more fans to my page.

That kind of off-topic posting is just fine!

The kind that isn’t fine is telling everyone what your favorite video game is or how you are glad your favorite football team won. It doesn’t cater to a wide enough audience.

The broader the post the better when going off-topic. It will heighten your engagement levels and drive more traffic to the posts that you want them to see.

#4 Too Much Text In Posts

Another mistake that people often make is writing short essays in their Facebook posts.

Since the introduction of Twitter, people have become accustomed to seeing posts with a limit of 140 characters. That gets you a line or two of text in Facebook.

So naturally, when people are presented with a wall of text, odds are they’re immediately turned off by the length alone.

It could be the best, life-changing advice in the world, and they wouldn’t read it. Shame on them!

Instead of writing down the advice in its entirety, write a headline. A caption. A snippet. Then have a link to your blog / sales page / squeeze letter / marketing tactic that they can click on.

Let your marketing pages and blogs do the work for you — that’s why you made them in the first place. Simply direct them there with the Facebook post and pique their interest.

#5 Breaking Contest Guidelines

This is perfectly legal.

If you want to run a contest on Facebook, it takes a little more research than you would ordinarily think.

Most of the other articles I’ve read are now outdated according to Facebook’s promotion guidelines, so here’s the abridged version.

• The contest must be legal. (ie. no giving alcohol to minors)
• The contest must be run through an app.
• The contest is in no way, shape, or form affiliated with Facebook.
• In order to register, you can have people like your page, check-in at your place, or connect to your app.
• Liking, sharing, or other Facebook functions cannot be the method of registration.
• You cannot contact the winners through Facebook.

Basically, Facebook wants no part of your contest, but are allowing it under some strict guidelines.

One of the guidelines that marketers don’t quite understand is the whole “liking” thing. You can have people like your contest but not like your contest? What?

Here’s the deal with that — you can have what’s commonly known as a Fan Gate to get access to the contest.

The actual action of “liking” may not be used to enter someone into the contest. This is generally done by filling out a form!

So, click “like” to see the contest, and enter your information.

Conclusion

I hope these cleared a few things up for you all. Yes, rules and regulations can be confusing, especially when not everyone abides by them.

By avoiding these mistakes, not only will your Facebook Fan Page be on the straight and narrow, but you’ll get increased engagement on your Fan Page.

For more tips and tricks check out our other blog posts. Our Timeline Blueprint is also full of helpful information.

Thanks for reading everyone, and please share if you found it helpful!