By Jessica Davis, Godot Media 

With more than 1 billion active users, Facebook is the best place to attract new customers and leads. Moreover, to increase its earnings and profits, Facebook has provided advertisers with the perfect API and platform to advertise on. So if you notice that your Facebook ad campaigns are failing, it is not because the Facebook advertising API is flawed but rather your advertising campaigns and strategies are. Here are 6 reasons why your Facebook ad campaigns are failing and how you can correct these errors.

1. CALLS-TO-ACTION ARE ABSENT
Facebook ads are small and advertisers and marketers have very little real estate to get their message in. Advertisers have only 90 characters to get all their text in and this means that advertisers focus more on describing their products and services than optimizing their calls-to-action. One of the biggest mistakes that advertisers make is cutting out the call-to-action from their Facebook ads. Advertisers think that a call-to-action merely states what the person looking at the ad already knows. They think that people will click on their ads even if they don’t tell them to.

However, this is not true. People are more prone to take action if they see a call-to-action in a Facebook ad. Something as simple as “Click Here!” can improve the efficacy of your ad campaigns. This is why you need to make sure that you place a call-to-action – no matter how simple it is – in your Facebook ads.

2. WRONG ADVERTISING TYPE
Facebook offers a plethora of advertisement types to help advertisers create effective campaigns. However, with more than 40 different types of Facebook ads available to advertisers, most end up choosing the wrong type. All the ads can be categorized into two types – Marketplace Ads and Premium Ads. The former are lower in cost, are meant for higher reach, and must be used if advertisers want more likes or fans for a particular page.
Premium Ads are best used to promote products and services as Facebook users engage more with such ads. Sponsored stories and promoted posts are examples of Premium Ads. Advertisers very often get confused between the two and wonder why their ad campaigns are not meeting expectations. Facebook offers excellent tutorials and samples about its advertising API. Read up and research all the ad types Facebook has to offer before creating your Facebook ad campaigns.

3. NO ADDITIONAL VALUE
Today, people always want more. If you are able to offer more than just your products and services to people, then there is no reason why they will not flock to your brand. However, most advertisers are unable to convey this benefit through their Facebook ads. You may have placed a great call-to-action in your ads and added great pictures but you need something more to motivate people to click on your ads. People want to know exactly why they should follow your call-to-action and what’s in it for them.
You can offer discounts, free eBooks, brochures, etc. to get more people to click on your ads. Think of the assets and content that your brand can afford to give away free or at a lower price and highlight such offers in your Facebook ads.

4. SPAMMY ADS
When advertisers are creating Facebook ads, they often forget what the ads will look like to a Facebook user. Marketers often make the huge mistake of adding too much text or irrelevant images to their advertisements, which can get their ads classified as spam. Instead of using the company or product name as the headline of your ads, make the headlines interesting and eye-catching. Make sure the image is relevant and looks good even when it is shrunk to such a small size. Also, the copy of the ad must be attractive too with the right call-to-action.

5. INSUFFICIENT TESTING
Creating the best Facebook ad campaign you possibly can is not a matter of luck or chance. You can create the best ad campaigns by testing thoroughly. The smallest changes in text, images and ad type can result in a huge difference for your ad campaign. Smart Facebook marketers create multiple campaigns with differing copies, imagery, target audience, etc. and monitor the results of each. After thorough testing, you will be able to figure out the best and most effective ad campaign for your brand. Make sure to keep the budget on your ads low while testing them out. When you find the most successful ad campaign type, scale it up quick.

6. WRONG TARGETING
Sometimes the Facebook ads are perfect but are not successful because they are targeted at the wrong people. Once you have a Facebook Business page setup for your brand, use the Facebook Insights feature to understand your fan base and how to target your audience best. This feature offers information about the interests, geographic data, age groups, etc. of your fans and followers allowing you to create the type of ads that appeal to them best.

Jessica Davis is a Content Strategy Specialist with Godot Media – a leading Content Marketing firm. She has years of experience as an eBook writer and works closely with online businesses, helping them succeed. She also works with the copywriting service team, implementing best practices for content search optimization and share-ability enhancement. Her other interests besides online content strategy, internet marketing and search engine optimization are, technology, sports and fashion.

By Taylor Casti and first posted on MASHABLE.

It’s been another lively week in the digital world. Here at Mashable, we’ve been so busy preparing for Social Media Day and running through Home Depot that we can’t blame you if you’ve fallen behind on your tech news. So for those of you who have been busy celebrating the fall of DOMA, we’ve got you covered.

Here are 25 digital media resources for the week, including suggestions for optimizing your Wi-Fi signal, apps for summer road trips, festivals and more.

Editor’s Picks

• Is It the Dawn of the Encryption App?
  Amid surveillance programs like PRISM and Project Tempora, it might be time for privacy-enhancing cryptography apps.

• OUYA: Fun for Hackers, But Not Ready for Retail
  The $99 OUYA game console might not be a hit with mainstream users — it’s still rough around the edges.

• Hacker School: Where Students and Instructors Learn Together
  Hacker School is for programmers in New York City. The free school’s lack of curriculum lets students focus on passion projects.

Tech

• How to Make a Customized Google Map
  Did you know you can create a customizable Google Map?

• How to Improve Your Wi-Fi Signal
  Whether you need a range extender, repeater, booster or just a better router location, these tips will help you optimize your Wi-Fi performance.

• 12 Google Chrome Extensions for Content Discovery
  We searched high and low in the Chrome Web Store to bring you the best extensions for content discovery.

• 11 Chrome Extensions to Improve Your Social Media Experience
  We did a little recon and found lots of Chrome Extensions that enhance the way we use social media.

• 78 Tools for Writing and Previewing Markdown
  Here are the best and most intuitive tools for writing, editing and previewing Markdown.

• 4 Ways to Protect Your Tech This Summer
  Show your tech a little summer lovin’ by weatherproofing and waterproofing it with these tips.

Lifestyle

• 10 Top HTC First Cases
  We have found some of the best cases and covers for the HTC First smartphone.

• Upgrade Your Baby’s Tech With These 9 Gadgets
  Combining tech with convenience is a win-win for parents and their kin alike. Check out these gadgets that go above and beyond your average baby tech.

• 9 Beautiful Desktop Backgrounds Designed to Make You Smarter
  Educate yourself with these 9 beautifully designed, educational desktop backgrounds.

• 10 Fun Favors for Geeky Weddings
  Looking to add a little geek flair to your wedding celebration? Try these 10 fun favors.

• 10 Outdoor Music Gadgets to Use All Summer
  Check out these gadgets that bring your playlist outside.

• 5 Top First Aid Apps
  Be prepared for anything with these five efficient first-aid apps.

• 10 Best iPhone Car Mounts
  Are you looking for a simple way to secure your iPhone while you’re traveling in your automobile?

• 10 Free Road Trip Apps for a Smooth Vacation
  Use these free road-trip apps to keep your vacation from falling apart at the seams.

• How to Survive a Forced Tech Detox (AKA Summer Vacation)
  Yikes — this campsite doesn’t have Wi-Fi. You will survive, we promise. Here’s a helpful guide to get you through your tech detox (a.k.a. summer vacation).

• 10 Best Apps for Summer Festivals
  Use these apps to get ready for — and make the most of — your summer festival experience.

Business

• The History of Advertising at Cannes Lions
  This series of infographics recap 60 years of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

• 25 Top UK Startups
  The London startup scene is well-documented. But the UK innovation ecosystem is not confined to the city.

• How to Solicit the Customer Feedback Your Startup Needs
  Customer feedback is pivotal for a startup to achieve success. Learn how to solicit feedback, improve your product and make the most of customer sentiment.

• How Much Is Your Bitcoin Worth? Use This Calculator
  For a quick and easy way to determine the value of your Bitcoin in fiat money, check out this Bitcoin exchange calculator.

• Social Makeover: A Cheese Merchant Sees Results on Facebook
  Last month, a consultant from our Small Business Panel outlined a strategy for Cheesetique — and the owner is thrilled with the results.

• 5 Reasons College Students Should Be in Professional Organizations
  Here are the top five reasons why students should be active in professional organizations that align with their career paths.

by Michael Garrity and first appeared on WebsiteMagazine.com.

Last week, the pay-per-click (PPC) world was probably changed forever when Google began introducing an extension that allows advertisers to place images into its standard text-based AdWords ads on its search engine results pages (SERPs). 

At present, Google says that about one in every six searches on the search engine provides results with “visual content,” and that number is only going to increase as Web users demand more and more easy-to-digest and visually appealing content. As a result, the company decided to improve the overall flexibility of its paid search ads to follow consumer trends.

But wait. I know that you may be thinking to yourself that image-based PPC ads just sound a lot like Google’s already existent crop of product listing ads (PLAs) that feature a clean cut, catalog-ready picture of the products (or related products) that a user searched for, along with information like price and provider.

That’s not the case with these PPC images, however, which are far sleeker and focus on providing a visual experience with the product in question, as opposed to just a sterile image totally devoid of personality. Google’s paid search ads can also feature more than just static images, as they’ll work with animated gifs and Flash animations, as well.

It Pays to Be on Top
Let’s not forget that the inclusion of image content on AdWords ads is still an incredibly new phenomenon, and one that exists only in beta mode. Because of that, no one really has much information about the specific (and important) details regarding things like how many ads will be able to display image results, or if there will be overlap with PLAs.

However, what is unquestionably clear is that, for now at least, all PPC images (which come in groups of three) are going to be located directly above and limited to the first paid search listing, which really draws the user’s attention to the top of the section and highlights the ranking in the top spot. This makes having the number one paid search ranking on Google just became significantly more appealing.

What the Beta Launch Tells Us
So, although details are still sparse regarding the actual changes that image-augmented PPC ads will make for the paid search industry in the long run, even with just a week of testing, a few key observations have already emerged.

For now, only big money advertisers like Samsung are actually able to show images with their PPC ads, but Google is already accepting applications from current AdWords customers to include images, custom text and site links in their own paid search ads.

What we have learned from their experiences, and from Google’s initial announcement, is that there will be some restrictions on the images that advertisers can display with their PPC ads. The biggest (and most obvious) being that they absolutely must own the image that they’re trying to display. And for anyone who thinks they can be sneaky and just pass off a stolen image as their own, they should know that Google will go through a rigorous review process before actually showing the images with the ads. (This also helps ensure that nothing to questionable or inappropriate is displayed.)

A handful of advertisers and PPC managers have already had some trouble getting their images approved by Google, such as a company that tried to promote pictures of dresses for the keyword “runways.” Google has also turned down a collection of images because it apparently only allows one of the three pictures displayed to have white space around it (presumably to ensure they don’t end up looking too much like PLAs).

Needless to say, following the AdWords guidelines may prove to be trickier than you may initially expect. Thankfully, there are a few general rules of thumb that advertisers can keep in mind to streamline the validation process. For starters, make sure you present Google with high quality images right off the bat, and they cannot include animations, overlays or logos that are not part of your product. Google also prefers pics that are 640px by 360px and only allows a 16:9 aspect ratio. Perhaps most importantly, though, is that you must submit an image that is already available and visible on your website.

The Story So Far
Right now, just one percent of all Google searches are even seeing these image-conscious PPC ads, so there’s not a lot of concrete data that we can go off of, particularly when it comes to getting performance reports on individual images.

In the meantime, one thing that advertisers and PPC managers can do is to create new ad groups specifically for these image extensions that indicate when images should be representative of all of the ads or keywords in an ad group, and to make sure (or at least most) of the keywords in said ad group are “image-seeking” and don’t include information about the product’s price or online reviews. – See more at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/06/11/more-than-pretty-picture-how-to-deal-with-adwords-image-extensions.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter#sthash.lUzCZ5JZ.dpuf

BY VIGNESH RAMACHANDRAN and first posted on MASHABLE.

Think back to the last time you wrote in cursive — you know, that fancy penmanship you may have learned way back in grade school, complete with elegant loops, curls and flourishes.

These days, with our fingers tapping on QWERTY keyboards, Evernote taking the place of sticky notes and tablets replacing paper notebooks, a question arises: Has the rise of technology led to the fall of cursive handwriting?

In the United States, somewhere around the third grade, cursive handwriting instruction has long been a sort of milestone, or right of passage. But in recent years, the nation’s Common Core State Standards — which at least 45 states and the District of Columbia, have voluntarily adopted — took out the requirement for cursive instruction in K through 12 schools. It has stirred quite the debate, since it’s up to each individual state to decide whether cursive is important enough to teach its own students. In recent months, North Carolina legislators approved a bill to require its students to learn cursive in elementary school, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. North Carolina joins states like California, Massachusetts and Georgia, which have already added a cursive writing requirement, according to The Associated Press.

Some argue that cursive has important cognitive benefits or is an educational tradition worth continuing, while others don’t mind its demise. Even Hollywood actress Kirstie Alley has chimed in on the debate on Twitter:

Benefits Beyond Writing?

Suzanne Asherson, an occupational therapist with the Beverly Hills Unified School District in California, is among those who believe cursive should very much still be taught to children today. Asherson argues cursive is not only faster and more efficient than print writing but says the benefits go beyond writing.

“There’s definitely a link between cursive writing and brain development,” said Asherson, who also presents national workshops on behalf of the Handwriting Without Tears program. She recently wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times, in which she highlighted her perspective:

Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.

Asherson told Mashable that the discussion is really “not about cursive versus technology.”

“In today’s world … children need to know how to both use keyboarding to type, as well as being able to pick up a pencil or a pen and be able to write,” Asherson said.

“In today’s world … children need to know how to both use keyboarding to type, as well as being able to pick up a pencil or a pen and be able to write,” Asherson said. “Both skills are necessary and should be taught to our children in order to have functional adults who are efficient in their jobs and in the real world.”

Michael Ray Smith, a new media professor at Campbell University in North Carolina, agrees that cursive is important. He wonders about the costs of school districts ditching cursive instruction for other skills in demand, like computer keyboarding.

“The problem with this kind of trade-off is that students are not getting the brain activity that only occurs with handwriting and all goes along with motor and cognitive skills,” wrote Smith, in a statement to Mashable. “In the short run, handwriting is poorer. In the long run, abstract thinking and higher-order thinking may not be as well developed.”

A ‘Church of Cursive’

Handwriting expert and instructor Kate Gladstone argues that while handwriting is important, cursive isn’t.

“Teaching handwriting doesn’t mean it has to be cursive, any more than teaching math means it has to be in Roman numerals,” Gladstone toldMashable.

Gladstone told Mashable. She advocates for students learning to read cursive but opposes cursive handwriting mandates, saying that cursive writing should just be an elective.

“Most of us when we are little kids are told at some stage: ‘You’re going to learn cursive and this is important so you can legally sign things, and own property and vote and be a big kid and then be a grown up — which is baloney. Printed signatures are legal and always have been,” she said.

Gladstone joked that some cursive proponents seem to engage in “cursive worship.”

“We are not going to pack up and stop doing business as a civilization just because people are no longer joining all their letters,” said Gladstone, who also directs a world handwriting contest.

Technology is not killing handwriting, according to Gladstone, but instead

technology is giving “handwriting a new playground — a whole new realm to be in.”

“I’d say a lot of people have to be writing by hand and have to be trying at least to do it in some recognizable manner if there are literally scores of handwriting recognition and other handwriting apps that you can buy,” said Gladstone, citing the number of iOS and Android handwriting apps on the market. Even search giant Google now lets mobile users search via handwriting recognition.

Handwriting as an Equalizer

But for those who don’t have access to digital devices, handwriting is a “great equalizer for many kids,” said Kathleen Wright, national handwriting product manager at Zaner-Bloser — a curriculum company well-known for its handwriting instruction methods.

“I think the one thing that happens with a school that might focus only on digital and not give kids access to writing, is that you might see, maybe the composition isn’t going to be as long,” Wright said. “It may not be as creative … if you’re struggling with a keyboard.”

“I think it’s a human thing — that the act of writing by hand just resonates within us.”

That’s why Wright believes students should be taught both analog and digital skills: “Let’s introduce them to all of these things and then you have a great big tool belt and you can choose.”

Cursive Champions

Zaner-Bloser has an annual national handwriting contest for students in grades 1 to 8, in which nearly 300,000 students submit entries, according to Wright. Eleven-year-old Caroline White of Savannah, Tenn., won the top prize among fifth graders nationwide for her stellar handwriting this year.

Caroline told Mashable that handwriting is important to her since it “helps people communicate more easily.”

“It’s harder writing on the computer … because I think you have more imagination when you write [by hand],” the soon-to-be sixth grader added.

Her mother, Ann Marie White, agreed: “In my opinion, our creative writing skills have decreased overall. That is an ongoing conversation with teachers at school: You have those who are just adamant that it should be cursive all the way, and then you have those that say, ‘No … we just need to go to keyboarding because that’s how everyone communicates now.’”

White says her own children’s school district in Tennessee used to teach keyboarding in middle school but has recently pushed that earlier to kindergarten and first grade.

“With all of the research and with everything being online, I do think they need those keyboarding skills [as well],” White said.

Shifting Standards

Judging from its lasting presence in classrooms across the U.S., it seems technology hasn’t “killed” cursive but rather has sparked continued debate about its relevance in American society.

The western state of Utah nixed cursive from its own standards in 2010, but recently has been questioning whether to reintroduce it as a requirement. Tiffany Hall, K through 12 literacy coordinator at the Utah State Office of Education, said that, after a thorough study, they determined that cursive is important, since she says it can help students write more quickly. Hall’s office is now recommending Utah add cursive back to its standards.

“I think the purpose of teaching [print] handwriting is to make students efficient readers and writers, and then moving into cursive because it makes them faster writers,” Hall said.

But while Hall says cursive is still relevant today from an instructional standpoint, she brushes off any sort of cultural or emotional ties to it, saying Utah will regularly revisit their decision every few years.

“I’m prepared to go back and continue to look at these standards and say: ‘What are we doing to make the best and most effective use of the limited amount of instructional time that we have?’ Because if it’s not important, we need to get rid of it, we don’t have enough time,” Hall said.

She continued, “As our knowledge and understanding of how kids learn improves, and as we look at the kinds of jobs they’re going to have in the 21st century and the skills they’re going to need to have in the 21st century, we need to be changing too.”

Do you think schools in your own community should start, continue or stop teaching cursive handwriting? Are tech skills more important? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image by Mashable/Vignesh Ramachandran

By Shea Bennett and first posted on AllTwitter.

In less than a decade, social media has empowered businesses of all shapes and sizes across almost every industry worldwide to attract and engage with fans and customers to raise awareness, drive website football and boost sales, but it’s a relationship that, by definition, has to work both ways.

Accordingly, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have made it increasingly difficult for brands to maintain control of their online reputation, with these (and other) channels also empowering customers to proactively voice their opinion and share their experiences about these companies and their products and services. Which, of course, is fantastic when everybody is happy, but let’s return to the real world for a moment: what do you do when things go wrong?

Reputation management today requires taking control of your brand’s message before somebody else does. Check the infographic below for a guide in how to manage your business presence online.

(Source: MDG Advertising.)

By: LEO WIDRICH, originally posted on BUFFER and then FastCompany.

TURNS OUT, SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS TWEAKING THE COLOR OF A BUTTON CHANGES USER BEHAVIOR OR ENDEARS PEOPLE TO YOUR PRODUCT. BUFFER’S LEO WIDRICH EXPLAINS THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOR IN WEBSITE AND BRAND DESIGN.

Why is Facebook blue? According to The New Yorker, the reason is simple. It’s because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green color blind; blue is the color Mark can see the best.

Not highly scientific, right? That may not be the case for Facebook, but there are some amazing examples of how colors actually affect our purchasing decisions. After all, sight is the strongest developed sense one in most human beings. It’s only natural that 90% of an assessment for trying out a product is made by color alone.

So how do colors really affect us, and what is the science of colors in marketing, really? As we strive to make improvements to our product at Buffer, studying this phenomenon is key. Let’s dig into some of the latest, most interesting research on it.

First: Can you recognize the online brands just based on color?

Before we dive into the research, here are some awesome experiments that show you how powerful color alone really is. Based on just the colors of the buttons, can you guess which company belongs to each of them?

Example 1 (easy):

Example 2 (easy):

Example 3 (medium):

Example 4 (hard):

These awesome examples from YouTube designer Marc Hemeon, I think, show the real power of color more than any study could.

How many were you able to guess? (All the answers are at the bottom of this post!)

Which colors trigger which feeling for us?

Being completely conscious about what color triggers us to think in which way isn’t always obvious. The Logo Company has come up with an amazing breakdown which colors are best for which companies and why. Here are 4 great examples:

Black:

Green:

Blue:

Clearly, every one of these companies is seeking to trigger a very specific emotion:

When we feel compelled to buy something, color can play a major role. Analytics company KISSmetrics created an amazing infographic on the science of how colors affect our purchases.

The role of green stands out to me as the most relaxing color we can use to make buying easier. We didn’t intentionally choose this as the main color for Buffer–although it seems to have worked very well so far.

At second look, I also realized how frequently black is used for luxury products. Here is the full infographic:

How to improve your marketing with better use of colors:

This all might be fairly entertaining, but what are some actual decisions we can apply today to our website or app? The answer comes yet again from some great research done by the good folks over at KISSmetrics.

If you are building an app that mainly targets women, KISSmetrics suggests that women love blue, purple, and green, and dislike orange, brown, and gray.

In case your app is strictly targeting men, the rules of the game are slightly different. Men love blue, green, and black, but can do without brown, orange, and purple.

In another experiment, Performable (now HubSpot) wanted to find out whether simply changing the color of a button would make a difference to conversion rates.

They started out with the simple hypothesis of choosing between two colors (green and red) and trying guess what would happen.

“Green connotes ideas like “natural” and “environment,” and given its wide use in traffic lights, suggests the idea of “go” or forward movement. The color red, on the other hand, is often thought to communicate excitement, passion, blood, and warning. It is also used as the color for stopping at traffic lights. Red is also known to be eye-catching.”

So, clearly an A/B test between green and red would result in green, the more friendly color. At least that was their guess. Here is what their experiment looked like:

So how did that experiment turn out? The answer was surprising: The red button outperformed the green button by 21%.

What’s most important to consider is that nothing else was changed at all: 21% more people clicked on the red button than on the green button. Everything else on the pages was the same, so it was only the button color that made this difference.

This definitely made me wonder: If we were to read all the research before this experiment and ask every researcher which version they would guess would perform better, I’m sure green would be the answer in nearly all cases. Not so much.

At my company, we’ve also conducted dozens of experiments to improve our conversion rates using changes of colors. While the results weren’t as clear, we still saw a huge change. One hypothesis is that for a social media sharing tool, there is less of a barrier to signup, which makes the differences less significant.

Despite all the studies, generalizations are extremely hard to make. Whatever change you make, treat it first as a hypothesis, and see if the actual experiment supports your ideas. Personally, I’m always very prone to go with opinion based on research I’ve come across. Yet, data always beats opinion, no matter what.

Quick last fact: Why are hyperlinks blue?

This is something that always interested me and is actually a fun story. In short, it’s offers the highest contrast between the colors used on early websites.

Here is the full explanation: “Tim Berners-Lee, the main inventor of the web, is believed to be the man who first made hyperlinks blue. Mosaic, a very early web browser, displayed webpages with a (ugly) gray background and black text. The darkest color available at the time that was not the same as the black text was that blue color. Therefore, to make links stand apart from plain text, but still be readable, the color blue was selected.”

I think it’s fascinating that tweaking something as small as the color can completely change an outcome. What have been your findings in terms of colors and marketing? Tell me about it in the comments.

Solution to the riddle: Example 1: Facebook, Example 2: Google, Example 3: Flickr, Example 4: LinkedIn

[Image: Flickr user Darrel Birkett]

By Lisa Buyer and first posted on Search Engine Watch.

Is Facebook blue the new black for community managers? Social dashboards indicate Facebook marketing fashion changes by the season.

In order to stay ahead of the competition, you might have to download a book or two, attend a webinar or five, and stay on a regular diet that includes a healthy dose of the online marketing conference circuit.

You may also turn to trusted experts, the ones who spend their days and nights tracking, testing, experimenting to find out the best colors, times, lengths, accessories, apps, and more to find this season’s Facebook community manager dos and don’ts.

Two of the latest online marketing business books uncovered some Facebook fashion forward thinking designed with community managers in mind.

“The Complete Social Media Community Manager’s Guide” by Marty Weintraub and Lauren Litwinka along with “The Science of Marketing” by Dan Zarrella offer latest top shelf insights, data, and tips when it comes to how a brand can rank in authenticity and pull some publicity out of its Facebook Page.

Today’s community manager can double as a magazine editor by day and DJ by night, spinning content to match the mood, audience, and atmosphere of the daily Facebook newsfeed.

Use the 50/30/20 Rule

Weintraub and Litwinka’s spin on Facebook content calls for 50/30/20 rule.

1. 50 percent news: Include a custom blend of third party, non-competitive content from sites such as AllTop.com and Buzzfeed.com industry

2. 30 percent personality: Highlight a sparkle of strategic personalization and personality with real time journalism that can only happen on your Facebook Page.

3. 20 percent business: After you’ve given away all the friendship bracelets, it is time for business and put on the most tasteful type of branded, self promotional content.

The Art & Science of Facebook Marketing

Social media can be described as a cool blend of art and science, yet the proof is in the data, according to Zarrella. He notes these key findings when it comes to Facebook community manager formulas:

4. Be positive: The most shareable kind of content on Facebook is positivity and the least shared is negativity.

5. Avoid unnecessary types of words: Write simply. Aim for for the fifth grade level, rather than college level. Think USA Today rather than New York Times.

6. Let your hair down: Relax your corporate content and think outside of the boring cubicle world.

7. High five!: For post frequency, Zarrella found in his research that the sweet spot is four to five times a week but recommends brands use this as a starting point and experiment from there.

Should Community Managers go for the Facebook Like or Share?

8. “Shares are the best for word of mouth: A share means people endorse your content to the point of putting their reputation on the line. Your ad or post is interesting enough where people are willing to share it,” said Dennis Yu, co-founder and chief executive officer at BlitzMetrics.

Timing is Everything on Facebook

The data from Zarrella underlines a recent study by Salesforce Marketing Cloud:

9. Join the after hours Facebook party: Brand posts published between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m., which are defined as “non-busy hours,” receive 14 percent higher interaction than those that post between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., which are defined as “busy hours.”

10. Weekends are made for Facebook: The interaction rate for posts on weekends is 14.5 percent higher compared to weekday posts, however only 14 percent of posts are published on Saturdays and Sundays.

Less is More 😀

And to go along with the proof that positive posts are better received than negative, just say it with a simple :).

11. I ❤ Facebook: Posts that use emoticons receive 52 percent more Facebook fan engagement and have a 57 percent higher like rate, 33 percent higher comment rate and 33 percent higher share rate. Thumbs up and <3.

12. Less might be more on Facebook: Brands that post one or two times per day see 19 percent higher interaction rates than those who post three or more times per day. The key is to not bombard fans with too many posts, as Facebook news feed optimization often penalizes for this.

Delivering Happiness on Facebook

Social PR lessons to be learned for Facebook community managers and brands can come from some not so recent, but not so distant Internet entrepreneurs like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, author of the book “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,” which debuted in 2010 at number one on the New York Times Best Seller List and stayed on the list for 27 consecutive weeks.

What Facebook PR Secrets can Community Managers learn from Hsieh? These core values underlined on the Delivering Happiness website may also be a secret formula to social PR community manager success on Facebook:

13. Be true to your (weird) self. Live with passion and purpose.

14. Think, say and do in harmony and in consideration of others.

15. Communicate with honesty and respect.

16. Have fun and think full. 50 percent air + 50 percent water = 100 percent full.

17. Inspire and be inspired.

18. Be humble, be grateful.

19. Build community and meaningful relationships.

20. Keep your heart + mind open and aligned. Keep growing and learning.

21. Be like MacGyver and Bruce Lee. Do more with less, be creative and adventurous, and fluid like water.

22. Create change in the world more than you ever thought possible.

Be Real

Whether it’s with Twitter, Facebook, or whatever the next thing is, the easiest way to deal with everything is to just encourage employees to be real and use their best judgment, Hsieh said.

Facebook community managers are tasked balancing the art and science of Facebook PR and marketing.