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Cindy Ratzlaff

Bestselling author, award winning brand marketing and social media pro, Cindy Ratzlaff, creates sales driving campaigns for authors, books and publishers.

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Facebook Marketing For Authors

15 Simple Mostly Free Facebook Marketing Tips to Try Today

By Cindy Ratzlaff February 24, 2014

With more than 1 billion people on Facebook, the sheer volume of potential clients and customers makes this platform worth your marketing efforts. But building a following and making sure they see what you post has become a bigger challenge as Facebook continues to tweak the algorithm in favor of advertising and big brands. But do not abandon the platform just yet.

Here are a few nifty, mostly free, tips and tricks to help your content attract, engage and retain a fan base so that when you have something to sell them, they’re still listening. For more ideas on the specific how-to aspects of content marketing on Facebook, you can employ most of the ideas in 8 Ways to Get Your Posts Seen in the News Stream easily.

Increase your visibility. Think Brand You. – Cindy Ratzlaff, Brand New, Brand You

 15 Tools, Tips and Techniques to add color, style and branding to your Facebook Stream

Cindy Ratzlaff of Brand New Brand You says brand marketing need not be expensive.

Engaging graphics that compel the reader to like, share or comment. Here are my favorite graphics tools.

  1. PicMonkey: both the free and the upgrade version of this photo editing site are fabulous. Resize any photo to fit the ideal measurements for Facebook cover photos, news stream photos, avatar photos in minutes. You can enhance your photos, add a border, add text and more.
  2. Quozio: This is a beginner tool that helps any brand, author or speaker instantly create quality quote blocks to share on other social sites. Easy-peasy.
  3. ReciteThis: You’ll actually giggle as you use ReciteThis! because you’ll wonder why you didn’t try it before and you’ll recognize the backdrops you’ll have already seen on the Facebook pages of very big name users. This is a handy tool to begin branding yourself as a thought leader by turning your own quotes into impressive looking graphics to share.
  4. PrintShop: This little program was originally marketed to teachers to help them create fun graphics for posters, flyers and more. I love it. Think of it as PhotoShop lite and learning curve, short. PowerPoint: Using PowerPoint templates, adding your own images and text and taking a screen capture shot, you can create graphics to share in minutes. Drag them into PicMonkey to resize and voila, you’re a graphics rock star.
  5. Add custom apps to your business page on Facebook using Woobox apps. I love the way their Pinterest and Twitter feeds look and the app box covers can be customized by uploading your own image at exactly 111 x 74. Again, using PicMonkey to resize your image will make this so easy. Take a peek at how I’m doing it on my book page on Facebook for Queen of Your Own Life.
  6. Iconosquare: This is my favorite app for pulling your Instagram account into a custom Facebook app. I love the look and the way your account is displayed using this app.
  7. Contest apps help you do a variety of engagement activities on Facebook. You can mask valuable content and reveal it only to those who enter the contest, you can ask people to like, comment or share something to enter or to tell a friend. All of these contest apps (and many more) are worth looking over for their various options.  Most have free options and a small fee for a more advanced option.
    1. http://Rafflecopter.com
    2. http://Wishpond.com
    3. http://Tabsite.com
    4. http://Heyo.com
    5. http://Offerpop.com
  8. Create video messages for your fan base to solve a problem, demonstrate your authority, share an inspiration or promote an offer.  If you’re a PC user, you might like to try ScreenFlow.  www.telestream.net. ScreenFlow is a video creation and editing software for Mac users.
  9. If you’re a PC user, you should take a look at Camtasia for the same purpose as I mentioned in #9.  http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html is similar video software for PC users. They do also have a Mac version, which I use but many Mac users prefer ScreenFlow.
  10. Instagram now has a 15 second video option as well as the digital photo option in their app. You can toggle from photo to video in a snap and upload to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook in one click.
  11. Don’t forget the easiest tricks of all. Your computer comes with a mic and camera. You can record video directly to Facebook by clicking the video icon option in your status update bar. This is a nifty and underused visibility strategy.
  12. YouTube – Create a YouTube account. Record some screen capture videos (see #9 and #10). Share those videos from YouTube to Facebook and Twitter as well as pin them to Pinterest. End of story. Do it now.
  13. Hate creating video? Don’t want to be on camera quite yet? Then Animoto is for you. This is my all time favorite tool for turning digital images into video. Upload your graphics, add some text, pick a wonderful template, choose music from the royalty free library, and mix. In 60 seconds or less, you’ll have a professional looking video to share on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, your website, Pinterest, G+ and in email marketing.
  14. 22 Social has a brilliant concept. No website. Connect with them on Facebook and get their app to broadcast live hangouts on your business page. https://www.facebook.com/22Social
  15. Livestream: Meerkat, Periscope, Blab and others give you an instant platform for creating livestream videos to share on multiple social networks.

For more tips, tricks, tools and techniques to help you grow your social following through Facebook business pages, connect with me on my business page, Brand New Brand You, where I share ideas daily.

*Featured Image Credit: spaxiax / Shutterstock.com

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Filed Under: Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: brand marketing, branding, entrepreneurs, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media Marketing, tips, tools

About Cindy Ratzlaff

Cindy Ratzlaff was named to the Forbes “20 Best Branded Women on Twitter” list and Forbes Woman called her one of the “Most Influential Women Tweeting about Entrepreneurship.”

During her 20-plus years as a publishing executive, Cindy created branded marketing and PR campaigns that ushered more than 200 books onto the New York Times bestseller lists. She was named to the Ad Age Marketing 50 list for the launch campaign behind The South Beach Diet.

She is the author of three books, and her essays on happiness have appeared on Oprah.com, CNN.com and her articles on social marketing have can be read on Business Insider. She speaks to conferences such as BookExpo America, Pennsylvania Conference for Women, Romance Writers of America, Ernst & Young, Garden Writers Association, Texas Conference for Women, United Way’s Ignite Leadership Network, Massachusetts Conference for Women, and more on the topics of happiness, personal branding and creating a digital footprint.

She engages daily with more than 450,000 people through her popular Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blog sites.

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