Promoting with Facebook Photos
Yes. I am actually dedicating an entire piece to Facebook photos and how freaking awesome they are for networking. There’s a shit-ton of different ways to use them to increase personal, product, or brand awareness. I had the idea for this piece after I helped out with a county cleanup day, so I will probably just go through the whole process and probably use some of the stuff I did and name a name or two.
First I need to talk about the basics. In your personal account, go to the area you would update a status. You have three choices; “update status,” “add photos/videos,” or “create photo album.” You want to click “add photos/videos.” It then lets you select which photos to upload. Click your photo and wait a moment so it’s uploaded. Above the photo you can add a caption. Do so. Below the photo you will see your own name tagged. If there are more people in the photo that you are Facebook friends with, add them. Facebook has done a great job with facial recognition and it knows the difference between faces and other round objects. Select the faces and scroll through or type in the names of your friends. You also have a button with a smiley face in it. That’s to add an emotion. That’s not necessary, but some people like to see those. Then there is a final button that has a pin for pinning a location. Pin the business the photo was taken in. Once you post it, you can go to the “edit” button and now you’re able to set a date and time to your picture.
So those are the six basic elements and how to initially post a picture. Now I will break down the six elements and give a piece by piece account of what you are really doing and how to use them.
Picture
Make sure this is a picture you want the public to see. A picture is worth a thousand words and it may be shared often by others. The picture needs to tell a story itself. Some people may only see the picture and move on. This is the point where you need to sell what happened by the picture you are showing.
Caption
When I did the county cleanup day, I was participating with the LaPorte County Solid Waste District who organized the event and I was working with the Michigan City Republican Club. By mentioning the LaPorte County Solid Waste District in my post, they received notification that I did this, as did the Michigan City Republican Club. They were able to directly comment on my picture as a Page and their fans (people who “like” their page) are able to see that they commented on my photo, and my friends see the comment they made. You can also add friend’s names to the caption as a tag so they know they were “mentioned” in it and it will be seen on their personal Facebook wall.
Tag
Tag everyone you’re Facebook friends with that are in the photo. They posed for the picture, so they won’t (usually) care. The picture is now set as one of their pictures too. This allows friends of your’s that don’t know each other to potentially network, but furthermore, it puts your name out there for all of their friends to see. If your friend has one hundred friends that you don’t know, all one hundred of them now see the photo with you in it. That is just good marketing and since people tend to be similar to their friends, you have just networked without leaving the comfort of your computer chair. In my case, there were six other people so I networked with over 1,000 people that I don’t already know just by tagging my friends. Now I wasn’t trying to sell a thing by what I did. I am just using this as an example. If it had been an election year, in my personal caption, I would have added my election page as well to get that caption to be read by those friends of the friends.
Emotion
Some people love them and others hate them. I ascribe to the latter, but I understand where they are coming from. I choose not to use them. So how was I feeling that day? Was I “determined,” “tired,” “sad,” or “angry?” I wasn’t really any of them. I was in a decent enough mood for being up at 9AM, but it adds a certain amount of humanity to the posting.
Geotag (Pin)
Pin the location. We ended our day at Walgreens. They allowed us to stage there and use it for parking and have the LaPorte County Solid Waste District pick up the bags of garbage we collected. That’s where we posed for the picture in front of the bags of garbage and they have a lot of people. Now people check in everywhere and sometimes they tell a little too much about themselves. I wouldn’t be shocked if I saw, “Picking up my Valtrex” then geotag Walgreens. That stays on the Walgreens Facebook Page as a check-in and people see it. By pinning my picture there, it shows all seven in my group at Walgreens that day, adds a picture (which is likely to be viewed), and can increase interest in you (you, your product, service, or whatever).
Date
Date the photo. It’s easy enough and it helps establish a timeline. I know it sounds a little too intrusive, but if your purpose is to increase the awareness of something, it works!
If you operate a Facebook Business Page, everything works basically the same way here and it increases your brand awareness of the “product” you are trying to sell to people.
Facebook is a social network, which means it’s a network, first and foremost. Use the networking power of Facebook to create new potential contacts and you will be happy you did. While running for office, I’ve heard “social media doesn’t win elections.” Ask President Obama about the validity of that statement and if he agrees with it, but it’s sort of true. Signs don’t win either and neither do postcards. What does win an election? Votes! Votes win elections and the way you get votes is by those various types of contacts, including social media. Though you cannot rely on Facebook as your sole means of advertising, it needs to be added to your marketing mix as a way to promote yourself and your products. It takes 3.5 contacts with a buyer to sell them a product if they are thinking about it. Facebook is just one sales method and with that picture I posted, I just put my name in front of 1,000 people or so.
I would like to point out that I am not running for anything and this is my third year helping with this annual project. At no point have I done this to try winning an election, but if I were running at the time of a cleanup day, I would wear my campaign shirt. I actually enjoy the service I do and it is not a personal means of self promotion to me and I hate when people do causes like that for personal gain and self-promotion. With that, I understand that you can do so and I was using it as an example since it was a recent event and started this piece within ten minutes of posting the picture.
For more pieces like this, please go to website for Michael Beebe, Spark Plug Strategies, or Full Tilt Business.
Picture a young Michael Beebe, fresh out of La Porte High School in ’93, diving headfirst into the world of hospitality with a busboy gig at the old La Porte Holiday Inn. That hustle led him to an Associate of Science from Purdue-North Central in ’95 and a Bachelor’s in Hospitality Management from Purdue-Calumet in ’97 (those schools are now merged into Purdue-Northwest, by the way). Michael’s early career was a whirlwind—running a 140-room hotel in Indianapolis, where he learned the ins and outs of the industry but realized it wasn’t his true calling. What did spark his passion? Teaching. He found himself thriving in front of students at Ivy Tech Community College and Lake Michigan College, sharing the art and science of hospitality management. Oh, and he also moonlighted at WIMS radio in Michigan City, juggling both on-air and behind-the-scenes roles with his signature high energy.
Politics? That’s been Michael’s sidekick since he was 18, registering to vote with a fire in his belly to make a difference. He threw his hat in the ring for La Porte County Council in 2010, where he got a crash course in the power of social media marketing. Undeterred by not winning, he campaigned for Indiana’s General Assembly in 2012 and took another shot at the County Council in 2014 and 2016. Though he hasn’t clinched a seat yet, Michael’s relentless drive to serve shines through. Lately, he’s been pouring that energy into helping other candidates who champion personal liberty, amplifying their voices with his knack for strategy.
Here’s a twist: Michael once co-owned a tattoo shop, despite having no ink himself. As the business manager and marketing guru, he leaned hard into low-cost, social media-driven campaigns to put the shop on the map. That experience fueled his love for digital marketing, and now he spends his free time crafting websites and boosting businesses online—a true labor of love.
These days, Michael’s living the dream as an independent contracted transporter, crisscrossing the country while getting paid to soak up new places and cultures. When he’s not exploring, he’s parked somewhere scenic, laptop open, building his digital consulting company, Spark Plug Strategies, or penning his thoughts. He even wrote a few books.
Based in La Porte County, Indiana, Michael’s embraced a “decentralized laptop lifestyle,” blending work, travel, and passion projects into a life that’s as dynamic as he is.