This is one of the things that I never really knew how to get started.

I have a Facebook account like everyone else but that is for me to make posts and for my Grandma to share those posts, no matter what it is because that is what Grandmas do, I love you Grandma!

So when I decided to make the leap and turn my Facebook profile into my online business profile and left my friends and family on it I just told them what I was up to so they were ready and did not think I had been hacked and/or lost my mind.

But then again they are used to ignoring my posts about Internet technology or history or economics or politics or some other thing I would randomly post depending on what I thought was important to share on Facebook when I did logon which was not often.

The point being do not ignore Facebook as the marketing tool that it is, with your ability to have 5000 potential customers, err I mean “friends” to put your offers, I mean valuable content, in front of on a daily basis.

Just by looking around and finding people that are interesting in the same things as you are marketing.

Then adding them to your friends list and being social with them 30 minutes or more a day, by posting things that are interesting and helpful to them.

In all seriousness Facebook gives you the platform to allow people to get to Know, Trust and Like you, which is the name of the game.

So, you now know what you need to do to get started.

But to drive the point home, none of that really matters without traffic right?

This is the one thing that’s usually missing when you read a post or buy a course on affiliate marketing.

They will tell you how you will make money, but they do not tell you how to actually get your business up and running.

Here are a few quick, easily and FREE methods of generating fresh, targeted traffic to your blog and your squeeze page which has your lead magnet.

I am going to concentrate here on getting traffic from social media, specifically Facebook, because it has a low barrier to entry, it is free and most likely you already have an account there.

Facebook has millions upon millions of active users, many of whom are interested in pretty much any niche you can think of.

In fact, Facebook makes it stupid simple easy to reach those users through various methods such as keywords, hashtags, and groups.

There are many ways different ways of driving traffic to your website with Facebook, but I am going to keep it simple and focus only on the most affordable, low-risk options.

For now, your focus should be on the fastest and easiest ways to get started so you can cut your teeth on their advertising platform and start to drive traffic to your niche authority website, starting with creating a site based sponsored story and boosting a post.

So people share your content on Facebook and then you can easily turn that post into a sponsored story, or boosted post in order to increase the reach of your content and to generate traffic to your niche blog.

This works well because it provides social proof.

What you are doing is boosting the exposure it receives, cashing in on all the Likes and Shares your followers are giving you.

In fact, the only way anyone can tell that it’s a paid ad/boost is with the “Sponsored Ad” notice, which they will notice but most are immune to it now and have just accepted it is a fact and if they are interested in what you are saying in your post will it not matter to them that is a “Sponsored Ad”.

You can advertise specific Facebook activities such as individual posts (a Sponsored post story), likes of your Page (Sponsored like story), or check-ins with Facebook Places (Sponsored check-in story).

Go to your Insights Dashboard here: http://www.facebook.com/insights/ to get started.

Enter in your website’s domain and connect it to your personal Facebook profile, or your Facebook page and create your ad.

You can set a daily or maximum budget and once approved, it’ll go live!

You can also boost a post which will often provide you with more flexibility and control.

Simply write a post (or choose an existing one on your page) and click the blue “Boost” button beneath it.

Set your budget, your target audience and the date range for when the boost should happen. Boosted ads typically get approved very quickly.

You should only ever boost your own content while focusing on boosting the posts that are likely going to gain the most traction.

You do not have to boost every single post on your page!

This would be a bad idea and a big waste of money, not even sure how Facebook would respond to this, but you do not want to do something like this that might get your account shutdown.

*Pro Tip* Facebook enforces a 20% text rule that means that if your image has too much text it’s likely to be rejected.

You should use Facebook’s grid tool to determine if your ad contains too much text and is likely to be turned down: https://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay

Also some great tools for posting images to Facebook:

Remember to test this before you boost your post, because you cannot edit the image or video used in a boosted post after it goes live.

If you wish to do this, you will have to end the campaign and create a new post and boost it. You can however edit the duration and the budget.

And finally, when you boost a post you will have the option to choose between “People who like your page and their friends”, or “People you choose through targeting”.

I typically choose the second option so that I can create targeted ads that are more likely to reach people who will be interested in my content.

Keep an eye on your boosted post’s overall engagement to see whether it’s reaching your target audience or not.

There you go .. a short introduction to Facebook Ads.

But when you really want to get serious about Facebook Ads you will need to dig in a bit deeper.

I will be posting more about how to setup your Facebook Business profile and start doing Pixels on your blogs and websites, that is where the real power of Facebook Ads will come into play and you will get maximum return on your Ad spends.

Note - that the Facebook Ad platform as changed the same as the user webpage and app has changed over time as they make it modern and improve it...

But the ideas behind Facebook Ads and how to do them and the way to target your core audience remains the same, just where you click to build the Ads have changed over time.

So take note of that when you buy Facebook Ads training ... you want your focus to be on the How and Why you are targeting your audience.

And  not so much on which buttons to click in the Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor (whatever they are calling it these days…)

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