Avoid These Facebook Ads Oversights

Facebook is easily the most popular social media platform, with more than 2.4 billion monthly active users and almost 1.6 billion visiting the site every day. This makes it the perfect opportunity for businesses to connect with an audience and find people interested in their products.

Unfortunately, Facebook marketing isn’t always that simple, and the majority of small business owners say their Facebook ads don’t reach their goals. However, if you’re not currently partnered with an agency but are looking for some quick tips to avoid simple errors that hold your campaigns back and hurt results, this article can help. Here we will cover a few of the most common Facebook marketing mistakes and help you develop more effective strategies.
 
Failing to Create a Clear Plan
Small business owners are typically responsible for a wide range of tasks, and this makes it difficult to give Facebook marketing the attention it deserves. If you advertise on Facebook without a clear vision for each campaign, you probably won’t achieve your marketing goals.
It’s important to match each goal to a relevant statistic that can measure the success of each ad. If you’re looking to increase brand awareness, for example, you shouldn’t focus on conversions when evaluating your results. Instead, look at metrics like impressions and cost per impression to determine how successful you were in reaching out to new users.
 
Failing to Target the Right Users
Facebook allows you to pay for each ad based on either impressions or clicks, but these numbers don’t always reflect the value of your content. If you target users who aren’t interested in your brand’s product or core message, impressions and clicks probably won’t lead to many sales.
Since Facebook’s audience is so large, it’s critical to use every tool at your disposal to target the right users. Targeting small audiences with granular similarities allows you to create personalized content that responds to that group’s needs and desires. Personalization is one of the most important factors in digital marketing on any platform.
 
Failing to Consider the Customer Journey
Sales are the goal of every campaign, but you can’t expect each ad to lead to an immediate sale. Customers often need to interact with a brand a number of times before they feel comfortable enough to make a purchase, and trying to sell products to cold leads almost always leads to a poor conversion rate.
Rather than pushing sales with every ad, start the sales cycle with engaging, interesting content that keeps your audience’s attention. From there, you can start moving each lead toward a conversion.
 
Failing to Retarget Existing Audiences
You should also take advantage of Facebook’s powerful retargeting features to market to users who have already interacted with your brand. Retargeting ads convert much more often than ads targeting cold audiences, and you can personalize retargeting campaigns to respond to customer behavior. It’s important to build your Facebook ads for long-term engagement in addition to short-term sales. 
You can create retargeting audience based on website interactions by setting up the Facebook pixel on your site. Facebook also allows you to develop audience using other factors like app activity, customer profiles, and previous Facebook engagement. Start building retargeting audiences by accessing the “Audiences” section in Ads Manager.
 
Facebook marketing is a complicated process, and it’s easy to make these simple mistakes that decrease sales, engagement, and audience retention. Addressing these issues will help you improve your Facebook results and achieve a higher ROI on your next campaign.

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Thanks to Rae Steinbach for contributing this post today. Rae is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing (of course). You can follow her on Twitter - @araesininthesun

Insecure Writer's Support Group and Anthology Contest Winners!

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.


The awesome co-hosts today are Tonja Drecker, Beverly Stowe McClure, Nicki Elson, Fundy Blue, and Tyrean Martinson!

December 4 question - Let's play a game. Imagine. Role-play. How would you describe your future writer self, your life and what it looks and feels like if you were living the dream? Or if you are already there, what does it look and feel like? Tell the rest of us. What would you change or improve?

Please note – since the next first Wednesday falls on New Year’s Day, we will be posting for the IWSG on the following Wednesday, January 8!

Announcing the winners of the IWSG Anthology Contest!

Coming May 5, 2020 -

Voyagers: The Third Ghost

Middle grade historical/adventure

Featuring these stories and authors:
The Third Ghost – Yvonne Ventresca
Winter Days - Katharina Kolata
Feathered Fire – Roland Clarke
The Ghosts of Pompeii – Sherry Ellis
Dare Double Dare – Louise MacBeath Barbour
The Blind Ship – Bish Denham
A World of Trouble – Rebecca M. Douglass
The Orchard - Beth Anderson Schuck
Return to Cahokia – L.T. Ward
Simon Grey and the Yamamba - Charles Kowalski

We’d like to thank our amazing judges:

Elizabeth S. Craig, author and honorary judge
Elizabeth is the bestselling cozy mystery author of the Southern Quilting mysteries, the Myrtle Clover Cozy Mysteries, the Village Library Mysteries, and Memphis Barbeque mysteries for Penguin Random House, Midnight Ink, and independently. Follow her on Twitter where she shares writing links @elizabethscraig or at her blog where she offers tips for writers. She lives in Matthews, North Carolina with her husband and is the mother of two.

Dianne K. Salerni, author
Dianne K. Salerni is the author of the The Eighth Day fantasy series and historical novels, The Caged Graves and We Hear the Dead. The Roosevelt Ghosts, featuring young cousins Eleanor and Alice Roosevelt and a vengeful ghost, will be released in 2020 by Holiday House.

Lynda Dietz, editor
Lynda has been fascinated with the written word since her earliest years of reading the back of the cereal box at the breakfast table. She’s now a copyeditor who works with authors in a variety of genres, both in fiction and nonfiction. She’s had a blog for over six years, and shares writing tips from an editor’s point of view with a healthy dose of snark and silliness. She’s also an unapologetic—but always encouraging—grammar thug.

S.A. Larsen, author
S.A. Larsen is the international award-winning author of the middle grade fantasy-adventure MOTLEY EDUCATION and the young adult contemporary-fantasy romance MARKED BEAUTY. When she’s not chasing her characters around a graveyard or antagonizing them with young love, she can be found in Maine with her husband and four children. Visit her cyber home at S.A. Larsen Books.

Rachna Chhabria, author
Rachna Chhabria's imagination has taken her all over the world and introduced her to all kinds of creatures. She is the author of Festival Stories Through The Year, Lazy Worm Goes on a Journey, The Lion Who Wanted to Sing and Bunny in Search of a Name. A columnist with Deccan Chronicle and The Asian Age, her stories have appeared in Young World, Open Sesame, Tele Kids and Deccan Herald Student Edition newspaper, as well as in several school textbooks. She also taught creative writing in a college for many years. As a child she loved listening to stories, now she loves writing them.


Lindsay Davis Auld, agent - Writers House
Lindsay first started at Writers House in the West Coast office, where she apprenticed with Steven Malk and has had the opportunity to work with some of the very best authors and artists in the industry. She is actively building her list, and is seeking picture book, middle grade, and young adult manuscripts. She has always been passionate about children's and young adult literature, and, as an agent, she is eager to help bring fresh voices, characters and stories to a new generation of readers.

Tonja Drecker, author
Tonja Drecker is a writer, blogger, children’s book reviewer and freelance translator. After spending years in Germany exploring forgotten castles, she currently resides in the Ozarks with her family of six. When she’s not tending her chickens and cows, she’s discovering new adventures, nibbling chocolate and sipping a cup of tea.

David Powers King, author
David's works include WOVEN, THE UNDEAD ROAD, and FULL DARK: AN ANTHOLOGY. He currently resides in the Mountain West with his wife and 4 children.



And a big thanks to everyone who entered! There were some great stories.


Our previous IWSG anthologies -
Masquerade: Oddly Suited
Tick Tock: A Stitch in Crime
Hero Lost: The Mysteries of Death and Life
Parallels: Felix Was Here


Nominations for best writing website are now open at The Write Life!
Please go nominate the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

The WEP Challenge for December – Footprints.

And the theme came from our very own IWSG Admin, Tyrean Martinson!

Footprints in the sand...Footprints in the snow...and they don't have to be human - alien, monster, unknown creatures...all up for grabs.


The IWSG Instagram prompts and announcements for December:

The next #IWSGPit will be in January 15, 2020, 8:00 am - 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.
Don’t miss it!

Did you know the IWSG has a Goodreads Book Club? Why the heck not?
If you’re on Goodreads, join this group to learn and grow as a writer.




How would you answer the question today? Participating in #IWSGPit in January? And are you ready for Voyagers: The Third Ghost?

Quick and Tidy Tips to Streamline Editing

By Gina Ardito

    I’m not only an author; I’m a freelance editor, too. As an editor, I want to give my clients every opportunity to clean up their manuscript before it gets to me. The cleaner your manuscript is when it hits my desk, the less you pay to edit the stuff you missed and the better your chances of catching a publisher’s eye. Let me help you achieve your writing goal with some quick and tidy editing tips.

   Have you just typed The End and can’t wait to dig into the edit process? Stop. Put that manuscript aside for a while before reviewing it. Give your brain time to reboot so when you come back to the story, you’re fresh, and so is the story.

    When you’re finally ready to edit, open the document. Before you do anything else, save it with Edit or Revision added to your original title. This way, you’ll always have your original document, should you need to refer to it at a later date. On your revision version, change the font style and enlarge the font size. With a new style and size, your eye will more easily catch errors you’d normally miss.

    Use a standard pen, not a marker or a gel pen that smears. Choose a color you like to make the work happier. Don’t opt for red unless you truly love it. Go with purple or green—avoid black, which won’t stand out against your type on the printed page.

    Find a comfortable spot, a different site than where you write. Don’t sit at your desk. Just like with your font, different surroundings make it easier for your eyes to see the actual words on the page. Go outside, to another room, or a coffee shop with your printed manuscript. Now, let’s start editing.

    Backstory: Only include information that impacts the scene.

    In Writing the Breakout Novel, Donald Maass advises, “Remember that backstory is, for the most part, more important to you, the author, than to your reader.”

    If you’re unsure if you need particular information in a scene, try reading the scene without the passages detailing that information. Was the scene hindered by its absence? If the answer is “no,” delete the backstory.

    Description: Let’s say your character’s plane is going into a tailspin. Is now a good time to describe the color of her hair and eyes? Do green-eyed redheads crash faster than blue-eyed blondes? Then it’s not important at this juncture. Find another place for such information in the manuscript. Or don’t. If it doesn’t impact the scene, let your readers envision the characters any way they like.

    Adjectives and adverbs: Sprinkled in, adjectives and adverbs add zest. Too much, and you’ve ruined what could have been a masterpiece.

    In The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman advises writers to cut excess:

    “…(1) where you use more than one adjective or adverb.” For example, “hot, humid, sticky” = “stifling.”

    “…(2) where you’ve used commonplace or cliché adjectives…” For example, “cold as ice” = “icy.”

    Modifiers: Useless words add nothing and should be deleted when possible. Are any of these familiar to your work?

almost

began

even

felt

heard

just

nearly

quite

rather

really

so

suddenly

that

very

    Dangling Participles: Search for sentences that begin with an –ing verb to find dangling participles. A dangling participle occurs when you modify the wrong noun. “Striding across the room, his eyes were drawn to her.” This sentence reads that “his eyes” (the subject) were striding across the room. “Landing at the bottom of the stairs, the pain shot through her bones.” The pain landed at the bottom of the stairs.

    Danglers also happen with words that end in –ed, so be alert! “Whipped into a froth, the chef poured the eggs into the pan.” I think the writer meant the eggs were whipped, not the chef.

    Starting a sentence with an –ing word can also lead to creating two simultaneous actions that can’t happen simultaneously. “Kicking off her shoes, she removed her socks.” You can’t do both at once. Try “After kicking off her shoes, she removed her socks.” Or “She kicked off her shoes and removed her socks.”

Contractions: “Cannot” = “can’t,” “who has” = “who’s,” and so on. Contractions speed up pacing and make your author voice sound more natural to the reader.

Dialogue: Avoid the “As you know…” trap. For example:

    Jenna flounced to the couch and collapsed in a heap of white tulle. “I don’t want to marry Stuart. I wish we’d stayed in New York.”

    “But, Jenna,” her mother said. “We had to move for your father’s health. The soot and grime of the city was too much for his lungs. He has severe asthma, you know.”

    This dialogue doesn’t move the story forward. The reader is probably more interested in Stuart, but the conversation focuses on the father’s backstory, which isn’t pertinent to the scene.

    When using dialogue tags, stick with “said,” “replied,” “exclaimed,” and “asked.” Avoid “responded,” “opined,” and “queried.” Better yet, use an action with the dialogue to convey mood.

    Narrative arc. Every story must have these key components:

    1. Opening hook

    2. Introduction of conflicts

    3. Initial success

    4. Stumbling Blocks

    5. Sub-plot, downfall, or introduction of new conflicts

    6. Ease of some issues, but original problem still looming

    7. Ticking clock/conflicts turn against protagonist

    8. Black Moment

    9. Climax

   10. Denouement

A few other common errors to look for:

    Character names. Make sure you use the same name and spell it the same way throughout.

    Character traits. Give each character a unique tic or reaction to emotional upheaval and a distinctive way of speaking, with phrases used only by them.

    Loose ends. All tied up?

    Continuity. If the villain has a gun in Chapter 3, he shouldn’t use a knife in Chapter 4.

    While editing, remember: Love the story, not the words. Be ready to kill your darlings if they don’t work. Best of luck!

Gina Ardito is the award-winning author of contemporary, historical, and paranormal romance, currently published by Montlake Romance and independently. In 2012, she launched her freelance editing business, Excellence in Editing, and now has a stable of award-winning clients, as well.

She’s hosted workshops around the world for writing conferences, author organization chapter meetings, and library events. To her everlasting shame, despite all her accomplishments, she’ll never be more famous than her dog, who starred in commercials for 2015’s Puppy Bowl.

Her newest release, MEMORIES IN DECEMBER, is available now. For more information on Gina and all her books, visit her website.