It’s no surprise that the major social networks are taking over our lives and changing the way people use the internet. This also means that more people are finding their preferred content through Facebook directly instead of visiting some of their favorite web sites. This is one of the major reasons why it’s important to focus your efforts on growing a massive Facebook following. It’s way too easy to keep focusing on your web site or blog content and forget to look at the nearly one billion users on Facebook.

In this post we are going to cover a few different ways for you to kick start your Facebook Fan Pages into over drive and how to get more people to like your pages and brands, and hopefully getting them back to your site where you can monetize your traffic even more.

Create a Viral Facebook Contest

One of the best ways to bring buzz and attraction to your Facebook Fan page is by offering a contest or promotion. Usually this is as simple as setting up a contest wordpress plugin on your site, then allowing people to share with their friends on Facebook, or simply “Liking” your fan page. No matter what method you take, make sure you have something in place to track your results and are making it extremely easy for people to “Like” your page and enter your contest, while also sharing and recommending it to their friends.

Simply Buy New Facebook Fans

As mentioned, there are nearly 1 billion users now on Facebook. Getting the attention of just the smallest fraction of a percentage could result in a huge following for your brand or web site. One method that people are using to grow their fan pages following very fast is to use a service like FacebookTraffic.org, which can bring you a lot of targeted and un-targeted users for a price. Buying Facebook Fans won’t get you the most loyal followers, but it will get you an audience that you can test your traffic with and maybe even pull them over to your site where you can get them signed up for your mailing list. Packages start as low as $36 for 1,000 followers, and you can choose what country you would like your Facebook Fans to come from.

Offer Premium Content and Bonuses

An excellent way to build up a nice following of Facebook users is to offer them an exclusive coupon, bonus or guide for becoming a fan of your Facebook page. We see this a lot with the major brands like Old Navy and other retailers. Once a Facebook users “likes” their Fan Page, they will have instant access to a coupon that they can use on their web site or sometime even print out and bring to the store. No matter what niche you are in, there is always something that you can offer for free and give as a bonus to increase Fan Page followers.

Adding Your Facebook Fans Page Badge to Your Site

For web sites and blogs with high traffic, an easy and free way to get people to join your Facebook fan page is by simply adding the Facebook badge to your page. Since most people are already signed into Facebook at all times of the day, should they visit your site and see your badge, all they would need to do is click “Like” and they will become a fan. The badge will also display other people who are Fans and there is a good chance they will see some of their friends faces on there as well, which will further entice them to become a fan as well.

Advertise Through Facebook Ads

Possibly one of the most effective ways to grow your Facebook fan page audience is through the use of the Facebook Ads platform. It doesn’t matter what the niche or concept of your brand or web site is, you can pretty much pin point your audience through Facebook Ads’ demographic targeting. If you have a celebrity based web site, you can target users who like certain celebrities… same for any brands, tv shows, interests or anything else you can think of. If you are really great at targeting and creating high end ad copy, you may be able to get new Facebook Fans for just a few pennies.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to grow your audience through Facebook and building up your Fan Page following. Try each of these methods discussed and see which works best for your. Don’t forget to look around and see what some of the top brands and your competitors are doing to increase their Facebook following.

For more useful posts and guides on how to make the most out of Facebook for growing your brand and making money through Facebook Ads, be sure to check out some of my previous Facebook related posts below.

• Breakdown of a Profitable Facebook Ads Campaign
• Tips for Designing a Winning Ad on Facebook
• Facebook Ads and Banner Blindness
• Setting Up Your First Facebook Ads Campaign
• Facebook Ads versus Google AdWords
• Tips for Making More Money with Facebook Ads
• The Future of Advertising on Facebook
• Split Testing Facebook Image Ads
• Facebook Advertising Just Got Better
• Split Testing with Facebook Ads
• Facebook Users are Spending Millions on Virtual Gifts

Remember a few years back when you may have seen the first advertising and tracking system that promised you the ability to see and spy on your competitors ad campaigns? The first services doing this were specializing in search advertising, then it quickly spread to other outlets and methods of advertising. With so many different ways to advertise online, now there are services for spying on nearly any ad type. One of the most successful and crucial advertising platforms over the past few years has been Facebook Ads. With almost a BILLION users on their network and full demographic targeting, their self serve platform is simply one of the best around.

With all of this said, any tools and tracking systems that help you monetize your ad campaigns and improve the creation process will greatly be sought after. One of these solutions is called SocialAdNinja, which is a spying tool for showing you the millions of ad campaigns that are currently running on Facebook Ads. While I’ve seen many variations of these spy services around, the tracking and break down capabilities from SocialAdNinja are quite impressive.

The difference between SocialAdNinja and many other competitor services out there, is that SAN gives you a wide range of search features to break down and pull out ad campaigns currently running on Facebook. Being able to search by “interest” is a huge feature that makes SocialAdNinja stand out from among the crowd. You can see an example of their search features and results in the screenshot below.

How SocialAdNinja Works

Once you create your SocialAdNinja account, you will have access to their search engine which pulls all of the current ad campaigns from Facebook, and allows you to sort by demographic, interests and profitability results. The best way to understand how the system works, is to watch the short 3 minute video below.

For anyone who thinks they can simply run a search result, then replicate the results and ad copy into their current Facebook Ads account, you are wrong. There is still going be a lot of creative work and data management from your end. As a Facebook Ads user you will need to start split testing different images, your age ranges, expand to different interests and figure out what mixture is best to create the best results. Even with the huge advantage to seeing what ads are running on Facebook, you will still need to do all of the dirty work to create profitable and long standing ad campaigns.

Detailed Individual Campaign Information

After you run a search result, you will then see a wide selection of running ads that meet your search results. Should you click on any of these ads, you will then be sent to more specific campaign details for each of the ad results.

Detailed Individual Profile Information

When you are inside the SocialAdNinja members area, you can select from their “Profile List” and “Target Profile Suggestions” features, which will break down different profile settings for individual users, which will then show you a bunch of ads that are appearing for users based on their demographics. In the example below you are seeing ads for a Male, 45 years old, Single in UK > London.

Using SocialAdNinja’s Information to Expand on Your Ad Campaigns

What you can do with SocialAdNinja is get a lot of ideas for new ad copy and images to improve your ad campaigns. Sorting ad campaigns through the “profitability” function would result in seeing ads that have been running for a longer period of time. This usually means that the advertiser is happy with the results of the campaign and it’s probably profitable. Instead of focusing your thoughts on just trying to copy ad campaigns for a quick buck, focus your efforts on creating better campaigns and see what offers seem to be doing well in different countries and demographics. If something is working well on Facebook, why not try to create the same type of ad campaign on Plenty of Fish as well?

How Much Does It Cost?

Now that you know what SocialAdNinja is capable of, you are probably jumping at the chance to sign up for an account. If you are already a Facebook Ads user, you will definitely see the advantages of this tool, and how it will give you a much needed edge for creating new ad campaigns and letting you know what is working and what’s not. There are two different billing structures when joining SocialAdNinja, there is a weekly membership that will cost you $87 per week, but the better value is the monthly membership at $147. As a reader of ZacJohnson.com you can use a special coupon to get a discount. Simply enter “ZAC35″ during checkout to get 35% off, bringing the monthly price down to $95.55.

Bottom line… if you are a Facebook Ads user, there is no reason why this tool wouldn’t increase your overall roi with the wealth of information and demographic target that is available.

Search Facebook Ads with SocialAdNinja

With the latest Facebook Timeline changes now in effect, I thought it would be a cool idea to feature some of the top names in the industry and see what pictures they are using for their Facebook accounts. As you will see, the majority of images are quite personable, while some are used for branding and marketing of their companies, brands and web sites. You can also visit any of their Facebook pages by clicking on the Facebook link next to their respective names.

Darren Rowse of Problogger.net – Facebook

Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney.com – Facebook

John Chow of JohnChow.com – Facebook

Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com – Facebook

Guy Kawasaki of AllTop.com – Facebook

Jim Kukral of JimKukral.com – Facebook

Mark Cuban of HDNET.com – Facebook

Ryan Eagle of EWANetwork.com – Facebook

Ted Murphy of IZEA.com – Facebook

Lorenzo Green of MrGreen.am – Facebook

Gary Vaynerchuck of GaryVaynerchuk.com – Facebook

Garin Kilpatrick of GarinKilpatrick.com – Facebook

Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com – Facebook

Ian Fernando of IanFernando.com – Facebook

Ralph Ruckman of IMGrind.com – Facebook

Shawn Collins of AffiliateSummit.com – Facebook

Neil Patel of QuickSprout.com – Facebook

Zac Johnson of ZacJohnson.com – Facebook

Facebook is quickly approaching the 1 billion members mark, and it’s also growing daily as a new revenue source for affiliate and online marketers. Through Facebook Ads, advertisers can target nearly all members of Facebook based on their demographics and interests. There has been a lot of discussion on Facebook and their privacy settings lately. This article will discuss the latest FTC settlement with Facebook. It seems like Facebook is always in the news for something, but they just keep growing and chugging along… is Facebook too big to fail?

On November 29, 2011, the Federal Trade Commission settled allegations that Facebook violated Section 5 of the FTC Act by virtue of its privacy practices.  The FTC’s enforcement action against Facebook is a clear example of the FTC’s efforts to ensure that websites live up to the privacy promises they make to consumers and that Facebook’s innovations will not come at the expense of consumer privacy.

The FTC’s complaint alleges that Facebook engaged in unfair trade practices by repeatedly failing to conform to its own promises regarding privacy to its hundreds of millions of users.  Specifically, the FTC alleges that although Facebook informed customers that they could “control who can see” their profile information by using privacy settings to restrict access to their profiles, these settings did not prevent certain third party applications from accessing their profile information.

The Commission also alleges that Facebook:

• Made changes to its website that made public, information that users previously designated as private, without adequate notice;
• Represented that third party applications would only be able to access profile information that was necessary to operate the application, but were oftentimes given unlimited access to consumer’s profile information;
• Provided advertisers with information about users despite promises that it would not do so; and
• Represented that users profile information, including photos and videos, would be in accessible upon deletion of accounts.  However, Facebook continued to allow third parties to access such content after accounts were deactivated or deleted.

The alleged violations of Section 5 of the FTC Act also include a failure to comply with the substantive privacy requirements of the United States-European Union Safe Harbor Framework, a voluntary framework that allows companies to transfer personal data from the European Union to the United States in compliance with European Union law.  Since at least 2009, Facebook has maintained self-certification with the Department of Commerce under the Safe Harbor program, under which it has declared its compliance with the seven Safe Harbor privacy principles in its public Privacy Policy and on the U.S. Department of Commerce website.  In its complaint, the FTC alleged that Facebook failed to comply with the Safe Harbor principles of Notice and Choice that required it to inform individuals about all the purposes for which it collected their data and to give those individuals a choice about how their information would be used.

Inasmuch as the FTC has recently agreed to consent decrees with both Google and Twitter involving record keeping obligations, the FTC now appears to possess regulatory oversight over the privacy and data security practices of the big three social networking companies in the United States.

This guest post was written by Richard B. Newman, an Internet attorney that specializes in performance marketing and regulatory compliance at Hinch Newman LLP in New York, New York.

The ability to target an audience based on their demographic data, but also their “interests“, makes Facebook Ads still one of the best ad platforms out there, if not the best. Through “interest” targeting, you can build campaigns that are focused on exactly what the user is interested in, which leads to a higher click through rate and more conversions.

Focusing on music artists, I’ve compiled a list of the top 10 music artists on Facebook and listed them below.

1. Eminem – 43,597,895

2. Rihanna – 40,970,115

3. Lady Gaga – 40,845,124

4. Shakira – 37,267,475

5. Justin Bieber – 33,219,214

6. Linkin Park – 32,525,479

7. Katy Perry – 32,218,637

8. Lil Wayne – 29,169,770

9. Bob Marley – 28,719,894

10. Akon – 27,966,380

So now that you have this information, what can you do with it?

The easy answer is to build an ad campaign which targets to each of these Facebook groups. Select an affiliate offer (such as free iPod/iPhone) and build a landing page that is built specifically for each target audience.

If you are lucky enough, you might be able to find an ad campaign that was already built specifically for your celebrity of choice. While looking through oDigger, I was able to pull up the following Zip Submit offer for Lady Gaga.

Get creative and see what you can do to build campaigns around celebrities, movies and music artists. Facebook just makes it too easy to target these audiences. Your job is to make sure the campaigns convert and back out into a profit.