Over the past couple of months, the tools I’ve been using have really helped me have a more frequent online presence while at the same time allowing me to have more time to do other things in my life. Once again, here is a list of the tools I shared:

Tools to Connect:

*Topify
*SocialOomph
*Rapportive

About a month or two ago, I discovered there’s a buzzword that describes people like me. I’m a “curator” – someone who finds informative and useful online content and shares it with friends and followers. I’ve been the resource gal for as long as I can remember! Being a curator is very time consuming (fellow curators, please nod along with me). Luckily there are apps people just like us!

There’s no going back – many of us lead busy social lives… online. Social media needs to be an essential ingredient in a birth pro’s marketing and networking strategies. It’s where a large number of expectant mamas hang out, and it’s where we can get their attention. It’s where we can be influential, and where we can change the state of maternal health in our society. The issue many face is that aside from the learning curve newbies face when starting out, to get the most out of social media, time must be invested in it. Anyone who is a heavy user of Facebook and Twitter (and now Google+) knows all too well the time suck that can result.

In the previous article, we went over how to set up, target and create your ads – in this last part of the series, we’ll go over the basic metrics and stats and cover the concepts of splitting out groups based on your campaign’s metrics to get the best people for your Page at the lowest price.

In terms of longterm advertising costs, generally a very local ad campaign for something as specific as a birthing professional isn’t going to get millions of impressions, so CPM is my eventual preferred method as it ends up being the cheapest once you figure out exactly what works for you.

In the first part of this series, we learned how to create basic variations of ads and explored some of the concepts behind creating an attractive, relevant ad for your birth business. In this article, we’ll delve into how to create the ad in Facebook’s system and target it specifically based on the kind of person you want to attract.

Setting Up Your First Ad

For illustrative purposes, I’ll be assuming you’re advertising your own Facebook Page while walking through this – though most of the tips here work just as well for your external site. I highly recommend investing your resources in building a Page, though – it’s an unobtrusive way to get information out to people who may be passively interested in your services, and the more people are aware of you, the more business you’ll get!

Getting the word out locally about your services is a vital component for your business and there are lots of ways you can put your name out there. I’ll be focusing on one of the methods that has a lot of long term potential for birth professionals – Facebook Ads.

Now, maybe you have a small budget, or maybe you think Facebook is too big of a place to advertise your birth business.

I literally spend no more than $5 a day and get my message seen at least 5000 times on a slow day, and this leads to highly relevant new fans on our Facebook Page daily!

After more than a year of not paying much attention to what’s happening on Twitter, I began dedicating more time in an effort to connect with others. In doing so, I remembered how interacting with Twitter is so much more instantaneous than Facebook, and how it’s a great way to find new resources and content.

In the past, I’ve participated in a few chats where I have “met” new people to follow, and I’ve learned a lot about the chat topic. About a week ago, I discovered @DoulaParty, a twitter chat that’s run by Desirre Andrews of @Preparing4Birth. It was a lot of fun, talking about all things doula-ish. Questions were asked and answered, support was offered, links and stories were shared.

Three years ago, I decided to figure out what Facebook was all about. In the beginning I made an honest mistake – I accidentally sent a friend request to EVERYONE I had ever emailed from my Gmail account. Within a week I had over 100 friends!

I discovered high school classmates and business colleagues. I sent out friend requests to people I’d known and liked. Eventually I began getting friend requests from blog readers and other birth workers. Occasionally, I began getting friend requests from people who saw I was a friend of their friend, or I was on a forum they were a part of. Sometimes I’d reject a request, but most of the time I’d accept them all.

A few months after I joined Facebook, I came down with bronchitis which turned into pneumonia. I was bedridden off and on for about 3 months, so I decided it was time to decipher Twitter, since reading and clicking was about the only thing I could bring myself to do during that time.

On one of my Yahoo Groups, Carol from Birth Journeys asked the group:

I have, for several years, used Constant Contact for email marketing and have tried to be faithful in sending out monthly newsletters. At $15 a month for a subscription, and the popularity of Facebook, etc, I am beginning to question if Constant Contact is still a good marketing tool. It has allowed me to keep my name in front of past students, some of which have returned to become Hypno-mamas, but my time is limited and I am not sure if I am really getting the best bang for my buck.

So, my question is this….. do you feel that e-mail marketing has now been replaced with blogs and Facebook, etc? Or, do any of you do both?

I am a really lucky birth doula. Why? I live within a wonderful birth community, with lots of caring, wonderful, smart women who offer support, suggestions and resources when I really need it.