Every ad campaign needs to be associated with an FB Page. Therefore, before you can run ad campaigns, you’ll need to create an FB Page first.


Words of Warning

3 important things to know to avoid/delay bans:

1)Avoid using an old FB page for a new ad account

Say you had an ad account – let’s call it Account A – that was banned before, that was associated with an FB Page X. And now you’re running on a new Account B. Don’t associate Account B with FB Page X or you’d risk getting Account B banned by association. (If this doesn’t make much sense yet, don’t worry – I’ll remind again when we set up the actual campaign and it will make sense then.)

2)Avoid assigning an old name to a new FB page

If you have an FB page that was banned before, or if the ad account that was associated with this FB page was banned: When setting up a new FB page, don’t assign the same or similar name to this new page. And don’t link this new page to the same website as the one on the old FB page. (For more info check out the “Updates to Our Recidivism Policy” section in this article.)

3)Read FB’s policies for Pages, Groups, and Events. You can find them here.



Dusting Off Your Research

Remember all that research we did back in this post?

Now would be the time to quickly go over the notes that resulted from these sections: “Join Relevant FB Groups and Like Relevant FB Pages” and “Use Spy Tools to Check Out the Competition”. On your research doc, you should have a list of FB pages to browse and borrow ideas from and model your page after. You may have even jotted down some post ideas for your FB Page. We’ll be referring to this research in the rest of this post.



The Importance of Having a Legitimate-Looking FB Page

Most affiliates that are running on FB aren’t aware that the FB page associated with the ad account can have an impact on your campaigns. I talked briefly about this in a previous lesson.

I wasn’t aware of this either, until I saw this post by Mr Baffoe.

(If you haven’t downloaded the PDF he linked to in that post, I would highly recommend you do.)

I don’t have definite proof that having a quality FB page will get you cheaper traffic or higher-quality traffic, or prolong the life of your ad account.

What I HAVE noticed, from all the spying I’ve done in spy tools like MagicAdz and Adpatrol, is that the longest-running ads are associated with high-quality FB pages, almost without exception.

So what constitutes a high-quality FB page? Here are the factors:

–Page Age: The longer something has been around, the more authority it has (or at least appear to have).

–Fan Count: A fan is an FB user that has either clicked “Follow” on your page, or the “Like Page” button on an Engagement Likes campaign ad (more on that later). The more fans a page has, the higher its perceived quality. More importantly, the larger the fan base, the more engagement each post you make will get.

–Content and Engagement: Posting quality content regularly. Quality content = posts that get engagement from FB users (e.g. fans) – likes, comments, and shares.

–Overall Look and Feel: A professional-looking logo, a good cover, link to a genuine-looking website, a physical address, a phone number – can all make the page look like it represents a real business and not something that was thrown together in minutes.

For most of us affiliates, our ad accounts probably won’t last long enough for page age to matter. But the other factors we can definitely do something about – which will be our aim for the remainder of this post.



How Far to Go to Make the Page Look Genuine

One question you’ll no doubt be asking yourself, as this lesson progresses, is “how far should I go to make my page look genuine? Will all this effort be wasted when my account gets banned in days/weeks? Or will this extra effort make my account stay alive longer?”

Unfortunately, these are the same questions I’m asking myself. Although I don’t have definite answers, I do have a few suggestions:

1)Make sure your entire business model is acceptable to FB in the first place. By business model I’m talking about the type of product/service you’re promoting, whether you’re operating an ecom store or capturing leads or just sending users to a landing page > affiliate offer, etc.

We’ve talked about this in a previous lesson. If your business model isn’t something FB approves of, no amount of effort you spend on perfecting your FB page will matter much.

2)Referring back to the list of relevant/similar FB pages from your research earlier, look for the ones that have been running ads for a while (a spy tool like MagicAdz can give you this info) that are STILL running ads today, and model yours after them. Look for trends: Do they have a lot of posts on their page? How often are they posting? Do they have a lot of fans? Do they have a physical address? Phone number? Etc. etc. etc.

3)FB is getting fussier all the time, so my suggestion would be to start doing as many things (as you feel are practical) to make yourself look like a genuine business, right now, instead of trying to get away with doing the minimal. This applies to your page, your website, ads, and anything else FB may see and judge you based on.



Creating a New FB Page

Here’s a step-by-step:

-Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.

-Here you need to pick a page type:

Chances are, you’re selling/promoting products or services, in which case you’d want to choose “Business or Brand”. (“Community” pages are stuff like hobbies or topics of interest such as “I love Cats”, and “Public Figure” pages are for – well – public figures.)

Pick a page type and click “Get Started”.

-Name your page. This should reflect the nature of the products/services you’re planning to promote. If you’re planning on building a website to host your landing pages (which is strongly recommended), the page name can be your domain name without the suffix/extension.

You can browse some of those relevant FB Pages from your research to get ideas as well.

-Assign up to 3 relevant page categories. Here’s a list of available categories. You can also browse those relevant FB Pages from your research and scrolling down to their “About” section to see the categories they’ve specified:

-Add an address, and optionally a phone number. Doing so will make your page look considerably more genuine (and your website as well since you can put this info on there too).

You don’t need to use your actual address or phone number. In fact, I’d recommend that you don’t, unless you’re promoting a long-term business. As mentioned, when FB bans your ad account you should not use the associated page to run ads ever again. Plus, you shouldn’t assign the same address or phone number to any other FB page in the future or it would risk getting banned by association.

Instead, get a virtual address and/or a virtual phone number. You’ll need to do some research on your own to find good deals that are available in your region.

Leave “Don’t show my address.” unchecked so your address can show on the page.

Click “Continue”.

-Upload a profile picture. This is the small picture displayed on the upper left hand side of the page. Upload a square picture and it will be cropped into a circle. A professional-looking logo would look great here for example (google “free logo generator” or make your own, or download from a stock image site). You can also see some of the other relevant/similar FB pages to get ideas from.

For specs on the profile and cover images, see here.

I would suggest to remove metadata from your profile and cover images. For instructions please search for the section “remove metadata” in this post.

-Upload a cover photo. This is the big picture displayed across the top of the page. For specs see the link above. For inspiration on what this picture could look like, see some of the relevant/similar FB pages. It should be a good representation of what you’re trying to sell. Note: This doesn’t have to be a photo – you can upload a video instead.

-At the online booking screen, you can set this up now or later if you need this tool. If you don’t need this tool or want to set it up at a later time, click “Not Now”.

And your new page has been created! Next we need to fill in more information and the content.

-Click on one of the “Edit Page Info” links:

-Fill in as much info as you can:

Most of the information is self-explanatory – I’ll quickly go through the ones that may not be.

Website: I’ll talk about this in the next lesson. You can leave this empty for now.

Email: Would be great to put an email from your website domain, i.e. [email protected] and not [email protected]. Again, leave empty for now if you don’t have a website yet.

Service Area: If your target customers are restricted to certain cities/states/provinces/regions, you can select up to 10 areas here. But if you’re serving an entire country or multiple countries, then leave this empty.

Impressum:This article explains what it is and shows examples of what info it should include. If you’re operating in a German-speaking country that requires having an impressum on commercial websites, then you need to fill this out. But even if you’re not legally-obligated to do so, this would be a good thing to do.

Privacy Policy: You should put here the link to the privacy policy page on your website. Again, if you haven’t built your site yet, leave this empty for now.

Be sure to click all the “Save Changes” buttons before closing the edit window.

-Next, click “About” in the left menu:

Check through everything and add any additional information you can, in particular:

Username: Instead of having a string of random numbers in your page url, like “https://www.facebook.com/pg/Vortex-Crystal-Store-123456789012345”, you can have a “vanity” url like “https://www.facebook.com/vortexcrystals”, by adding here the username “vortexcrystals”.

Edit business types: Select as appropriate – probably “My business sells goods or services online.”

Our Story: Come up with a short story on how you’ve developed this website to help users. Can include an image of 1200 x 445 pixels.

-Lastly, click on “+ Add a Button” (below the cover photo) and choose the most suitable button. (Again, can refer to other similar pages to see what button they’re using.)

Creating Content for Your Page

Now we’re ready to add some posts to the page!

As was mentioned before, the idea is to add content that makes the page look professional, like it’s well-managed. And ideally, your page will actually have some fans that can engage with the posts. A facebook page that gets new posts regularly, that receives ample engagement, will indicate value in FB’s eyes.


How to Create a Post

To make a post, simply go to the “Create post” area towards the top of the page, construct your post and click “Post”:

Basically, most FB posts consist of some text, and either a photo/video or a colored background template, and optionally a “Feeling/Activity” icon:

We’ve already discussed how to do research to get ideas on what kinds of posts to make, so I won’t go into that again here. In a nutshell: Browse similar FB pages, identify posts that have the most engagement (likes, comments, shares), and model yours after them.

Just a word on image/video specs: These are discussed extensively in later lessons on ad images and videos, found here and here. If you wish, you can go over those lessons first, then come back here to create the posts. (Note: FB page posts will show up in the FB News Feed of your fans, so make sure the images/videos look good for the news feed.)

If you don’t want to bother reading those lessons first, just stick to these width:height aspect ratios for image and videos: Try 4:5 (vertical) if possible, if not, 1:1 (square), and only use 1.91:1 (landscape) if you can’t modify an image/video to look nice in the other 2 aspect ratios. The idea is that the taller the image/video, the more portion of the device screen is occupied, and the more attention it will get from the user.

For starters, I would suggest to make 3-5 posts right away so the page won’t look “empty”.

Then, schedule 1-2 posts a week (or more frequently if you have time) for the next couple of months.


How to Schedule Posts

I can just hear you ask the question, “which days of week and times of day should I schedule my posts for?”

If you google “best times to post on facebook” and read the first few articles, you’ll find different answers. But the most-recommended time seems to be Wednesday between 1-3pm.

Of course this can vary for different industries/verticals, but if all you’re trying to do is make a genuine-looking FB page and not counting on getting sales directly from posting to the page, then the above should be a good-enough guideline.

This is how you’d schedule a post:

-Above the cover photo, click on “More” > “Publishing Tools”:

-Click on “Scheduled Posts”, then “Create Post”:

-Construct the text + image/video/background of your post, then click “Schedule Post”:

-Specify the date and time you want the post to be published to the page automatically, and click “Schedule”:

-If you refresh your page you’ll see that the post has been scheduled:

-Repeat for all posts you’re wanting to schedule.



Running Engagement Likes Campaign(s) to Get Likes for Your Page

This step is optional, but will make your FB page look more authoritative and can potentially delay the banhammer.

As I’ve touched on above, an FB page can accumulate what are called “fans”. An FB user can become a fan by doing either of the following:

1)Clicking “Follow” on the FB page.

2)Clicking “Like” on an ad you’re running in an Engagement Likes campaign (will explain this below). There also used to be a “Like” button on every FB page, but that button seems to have disappeared in recent months.

After a user becomes a fan of your page, every time you post to the page, the post will appear in their facebook news feed.

So the more fans your page has, the more people will see the posts you make to the page, and the more engagement (likes, comments, shares) the posts will get.

And the more engagement your posts get, the more valuable your page will be in the eyes of Facebook.

So how do you build these fans? There’s a free way and a paid way.


Inviting Your Friends

The free way is to invite your friends to like the page. You can do this by finding the section “invite friends to like your Page” on the right hand side of your page:

Click on “See All Friends” to bring up this window:

You can edit the invitation message at the top, either “Select All” or select individual friends, and “Send Invites” (optionally, check “Also send each invite in Messenger”).


Setting Up an Engagement Likes Campaign

If you don’t want your friends to know what products/services you’re promoting, and/or you want more fans than the number of friends that will like your page, you can run an ad campaign.

We won’t be setting up a full-fledged Facebook campaign until much later, but in the meantime, we can run a small campaign as a primer.

Here’s what you do:

-On your page, near the bottom of the left menu, click on “Promote”.

-Choose “Promote Your Page”.

-Construct your ad:

Format: Commonly either “Single Image” or “Video”. By default you’ll see the cover photo/video of your page, and you could just use that, or you can upload a new one. This image/video should be very relevant to your business, such that it will attract the right audience to “like” it.

Text: Ask for that “like”! Something such as “Like our page if you love [your type of product/service]!” or “Like our page for the latest info on [your type of product/service]!” should work.

AUDIENCE > People you choose through targeting: Click on “Edit”. Remember how we’ve selected some audiences to target in the lessons on audience targeting? Specify an audience you feel would be the most interested in what you’re promoting. Click “Save”.

Tip: If you want to literally get 10 times as many likes for the same price, target developing countries that speak the same language as your actual target country. For example, if your actual target country is the US, you can specify another English-speaking country, such as Pakistan, India, the Philippines, or Nigeria (listed in order from cheapest to more expensive). Warning: This is based on my own paranoia only – and I don’t have any evidence of this – but I’m worried that FB would get suspicious when I run campaigns “for real” later on and target a completely different country. For this reason, I would suggest to either just target the actual country (the one you’d ultimately be targeting when running the “real” campaigns later), or at least set up 2 of these small engagement campaigns, one targeting the actual country and the other targeting a cheap country, so that at least some of your page fans will be from the actual country. Hope that makes sense!

DURATION AND BUDGET: You can choose either to “Run this ad continuously” or “Choose when this ad will end”. I like the second option better because then I wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting to pause the campaign. For starters I would suggest spending $5-10/day for the next 5-10 days. Of course you can spend more or less than that. I can’t tell you how many fans you need to reach for this effort to be worthwhile. All I know is that even a few hundred fans will make a page look way better compared to having zero fans.

PAYMENT: Lastly, specify the currency you’d like to pay in, and the ad account you’d like to run this campaign with, and click “Promote”.

And that’s it! Hopefully by the time your first couple of scheduled posts are posted, you’ll have enough fans to engage with the posts – by liking, commenting on, or sharing them.


Another Benefit of Having Fans From the Right Geo

Aside from having people to leave likes/comments/shares on your posts, there’s another benefit to having lots of fans: You’ll be able to target them as a custom audience and sell to them later on. This can help to recuperate the cost of building the fan base and possibly more.

We haven’t talked about custom audiences yet, but will do so in detail in the lessons on optimization.

For now, just know this: It is ultra important that when you’re running Engagement Likes campaigns to get fans, that you’re attracting the right sorts of people – people you believe will be interested in what you’re selling. Because then, when you sell to them later, they’ll actually convert. So keep this in mind when you’re crafting ads for your Engagement Likes campaigns.

This is also why it can be good to target the actual country you’re planning to sell to eventually, when running Engagement Likes campaigns to get fans. If you’re planning on selling to the US later, but right now you’re accumulating fans from Pakistan for example, then you won’t have the option of selling to your fans later on – although you’d still benefit from a good-looking page that has lots of fans, and shows posts with lots of engagement.

So I’ve listed the pros and cons, and will leave the decisions to you (i.e. on whether or not to run Engagement Likes camps to get fans, and which country to target).



What If the Page Gets Banned?

If unfortunately, in spite of all this effort, your FB page still gets banned, you can appeal following pretty much the same process outlined in this post, either:

1)By replying to the notification email from FB that informed you of the FB page ban.

2)By getting in touch with FB support.

As for what to say when appealing: The suggestions I made for appealing account bans in the above link can apply here as well (obviously, adjust them for your particular situation).




Amy