suggestions on how to get more traffic through my FB page

[maddoghoek100]

the facebook pay to promote will almost invariably generate likes from click farms, it is a terrible scam that facebook is aware of and . it is designed to do so and it creates a negative feedback cycle. facebook posts are only published to a portion of followers and based on engagement additional followers receive the content. click farm likes will lower overall engagement. That said it has nothing to do with peoples religion, it has to do with the prevailing wage in a country. India, Southeast Asia, certain parts of south america, etc. Im sure you will get plenty of fake likes from hindus, muslims, chritians, athiests, etc. fake likes are both no discriminatory and non-denominational.

Yelp also has a long history of terrible practices, and is seemingly running a shakedown racket against merchants. definitely do research before doing any business with yelp.

If you host regular events or publish weekly specials that you think will drive customers to come to your restaurant if they knew about them, you should start with your existing customers. Create a flyer about a contest, give it out to customers with their check. if they like and share a post on your facebook they are eligible fro some price. a gift certificate, free meal, whatever. Their shares likely have a strong geographic correlation to your desired customer base. It is cheesy but organic and likely to generate active followers rather than passive followers. Facebook is not going to do much for you if you have nothing to say on facebook though. Make sure you have a good plan for regular updates to maintain your presence with engaging content. media plans are hard to create and easy to get behind on.

-Did you end up getting likes & followers from foreign countries (Muslim) even though you only put to target your specific city?.

[hunkster]

Great to hear BE had success with this. It might be Facebook is now doing a better job of zooming into your demographic, which makes sense.

Check out this BBC video on how they (used to?) do it and why it's not working.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWT ... e=youtu.be

[o4phish20o]

That said it has nothing to do with peoples religion, it has to do with the prevailing wage in a country. India, Southeast Asia, certain parts of south america, etc. Im sure you will get plenty of fake likes from hindus, muslims, chritians, athiests, etc. fake likes are both no discriminatory and non-denominational.

-Did you end up getting likes & followers from foreign countries (Muslim) even though you only put to target your specific city?.

I was getting a lot more than "click farm likes" on my page... was getting full blown comments in Arabic writing that I could not even read. And then beyond the Muslim countries doing this.. I was also getting comments/likes from the wrong social crowds. While it is definitely happening in India.. I also think its happening in poor inner-cities in the US. Low income people click all day... problem is.. low income people are not my target audience by any stretch.

My comment was more about how you can not target your exact audience. FB does not allow you to target a specific culture, nationality, religion, etc. Which for my business is something I needed and was not able to get. Also, there is no ability to target proper income levels based upon the service/product.

[bethemonkey]

I'm also in the process of exploring this... we'll see how things go.

[o4phish20o]

Check out this BBC video on how they (used to?) do it and why it's not working.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWT ... e=youtu.be

Wow, great video. This is EXACTLY what happened with me.
And now the genuine Likes who follow my page never even see any posts.
FB just stops promoting anything you post unless you continue to pay them.

[ErocAfellar]

I was getting a lot more than "click farm likes" on my page... was getting full blown comments in Arabic writing that I could not even read. And then beyond the Muslim countries doing this.. I was also getting comments/likes from the wrong social crowds. While it is definitely happening in India.. I also think its happening in poor inner-cities in the US. Low income people click all day... problem is.. low income people are not my target audience by any stretch.

My comment was more about how you can not target your exact audience. FB does not allow you to target a specific culture, nationality, religion, etc. Which for my business is something I needed and was not able to get. Also, there is no ability to target proper income levels based upon the service/product.

When promoting FB posts, you can definitely set your target audience location based on country, state/province, city, and a distance radius. So if you were getting likes/follows from other countries, perhaps you didn't set up your ads correctly?

FB profiles ask about "religious views" as an open ended question, but not specific religions and definitely not income, so it's no surprise to me that they don't offer those modifiers in their ad targeting.

[o4phish20o]

I was getting a lot more than "click farm likes" on my page... was getting full blown comments in Arabic writing that I could not even read. And then beyond the Muslim countries doing this.. I was also getting comments/likes from the wrong social crowds. While it is definitely happening in India.. I also think its happening in poor inner-cities in the US. Low income people click all day... problem is.. low income people are not my target audience by any stretch.

My comment was more about how you can not target your exact audience. FB does not allow you to target a specific culture, nationality, religion, etc. Which for my business is something I needed and was not able to get. Also, there is no ability to target proper income levels based upon the service/product.

When promoting FB posts, you can definitely set your target audience location based on country, state/province, city, and a distance radius. So if you were getting likes/follows from other countries, perhaps you didn't set up your ads correctly?

FB profiles ask about "religious views" as an open ended question, but not specific religions and definitely not income, so it's no surprise to me that they don't offer those modifiers in their ad targeting.

Watch that video that someone posted above. Explains exactly what I had happen to me.
It had nothing to do with how I was setting things up.

[phishstix101]

Lock it up mods! I don't want a shitstorm. Thanks everyone and would love to hear from you via pm if possible.

[ErocAfellar]

Watch that video that someone posted above. Explains exactly what I had happen to me.
It had nothing to do with how I was setting things up.

will do.

fwiw, my organization promotes dozens of posts per week and I've never had that issue. 94% of our page followers (24k) have US based profiles

[ErocAfellar]

one thing i noticed in the video is that the 2 pages he is trying to promote are not local, brick and mortar businesses. the first (bagel) listed the business location as "cyberspace" and a London postal code (or whatever term they use). the cat one was a community page with no local information.

while I am not saying you (or the video maker) are incorrect, i think that local businesses with physical locations, targeting realistic areas in a geographic radius can really benefit from facebook promotions.

a bagel company with no address, advertising in UK, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines might not be as effective.

just my $0.02, not trying to argue or start a fudge storm.

[BavarianErin]

I sort of disagree about paying for FB ads. I invested a very small amount into FB ads (less than $50) and was able to target my exact demographic, including age, location and "Likes" keywords.

I own a comic book store and so I used it to target men and women 16 and up who "liked" specific things such as the Avengers movie, the Arrow TV show, etc, etc. I also targeted parents while promoting our Free Comic Book Day event.

Just out of curiosity, b/c I had such an opposite experience and have only heard ones similar to my own.
-Did you end up getting likes & followers from foreign countries (Muslim) even though you only put to target your specific city?

Also, when I was setting up my target audience, they didn't really allow for me to get EXACTLY the target I wanted.
I found it very general, I believe as to make it not racist... but in doing so, drew a bunch of customers who really did not fit.

I did not find that to be the case in my experience, the likes were mostly from the metro area around me.

I have seen 2 kinds of FB ad generators, the first one was going in thru ads and making my own ad, the second was the "boosting" of a post, which offered less demographic customization than the first.

[o4phish20o]

one thing i noticed in the video is that the 2 pages he is trying to promote are not local, brick and mortar businesses. the first (bagel) listed the business location as "cyberspace" and a London postal code (or whatever term they use). the cat one was a community page with no local information.

while I am not saying you (or the video maker) are incorrect, i think that local businesses with physical locations, targeting realistic areas in a geographic radius can really benefit from facebook promotions.

a bagel company with no address, advertising in UK, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines might not be as effective.

just my $0.02, not trying to argue or start a fudge storm.

No Im not either... Just venting a little bit of my personal experiences & frustration with the service. I am going through very similar things as OP.

The part of the video that really jumped out at me was the part about how FB eventually starts disabling and blocking posts from reaching your TRUE targets and genuine Likes, due to all of the fake ones. Before I used FB advertising, my posts were literally making there way to 80% of my "Genuine Likes".. which was pretty good, although I only had a few hundred following, which is what led me to try advertising. Problem now... my posts don't even reach 5% of my "Genuine Likes" anymore... even my family and friends who "follow" my page do not see them. It's mind blowing.

[BavarianErin]

I would also like to suggest using the "promote this page" option which can be accessed via that Page Manager app. It's where I was able to dial in to the ages, sex and keywords that I wanted.

I find it much more beneficial than the "boost post" option, which you can see each time you post.

[middayshadows]

Honestly, when it comes to restaurants, it's all about Yelp reviews for me. I would focus on responding to any/all feedback (good or bad) on Yelp.

If folks see that you are listening and acting on their feedback, it will definitely help. Keep working on earning those high star reviews.

Good luck!

Man, I get harassed by Yelp! on a monthly basis actually. They basically threatened me with negative feedback/reviews if I did not join their service and pay a monthly fee. They keep calling me with sales reps, telling me to take control of some yelp page a random person created. Yet I tell them over and over that I do not have a restaurant and have no use/need for their service. Very pushy and angry group of people that work at Yelp. They can't take "no" for an answer.

I have heard this too. Or variations of it.

I was told that Yelp will filter out positive reviews and allow neg reviews, until fees are paid.

drymount that noise. I no longer use Yelp because of all the above.

[mobius006]

I got a decent amount of traffic from FB adds for my kickstarter. Its all about the right add with it. Maybe happy hour deal promotion to get people to come in.