Facebook has recently introduced some changes and that prompted me to look at some stats and facts to see if I am still going in the right direction with my promotion. Things change all the time, and no one has time to research all of it, so I am sharing what I have learned with you in a short (what I hope will be short!) summary for you. Facebook remains the most effective form of advertising. Bottom Line. If you don’t agree, you can stop reading and go make a post on Instagram or Linkein because you will need to work harder to get the reach Facebook provides. People log in an average of 8 times a day and refresh their newsfeed 11-15 times a day and stay 20 minutes (or more) per session. “Facebook sees themselves as and advertising tool. Businesses can’t expect to get things free. Keep a personal page and share posts back and forth from the business page to your personal page.” Quote and stats from Samantha English, "Retail Marketing Academy Webinar," Aug. 20 2018 Facebook ads are #1 factor to increase revenue in 2018 Facebook 49% / Instagram 28% / Linkedin 11% / YouTube 10% / Twitter 7% / Pinterest 3% / Snap Chat 2% What do we want from Facebook? ENGAGEMENT with our customers What does Facebook want for us? ENGAGEMENT between people with similar interests. These two goals are very much alike. We need to remember that Facebook is our advocate as users. As business owners, we have to consider their ways and goals to keep Facebook a viable tool for advertising. “Engagement rate, after all, are better than simple views, because you know that users aren’t just happening to see the Story, but actually paying attention.” AdEspresso by Houtsuite https://adespresso.com/blog/top-updates-facebook-monthly-need-know-now/ What's New in Facebook?Recently Facebook has increased security and tweaked their requirements for good social engagement. They have updated the content they will “reward” or “penalize.” WHAT IS A FACEBOOK REWARD? Rewards = Facebook sees your post as positive, interactive and something others WANT to see and will increase your ranking in your followers newsfeed which will increase your reach as it spreads out to friends and their friends (the ripple effect). Facebook will REWARD
WHAT IS A FACEBOOK PENALTY? Penalty = Facebook see your post as irrelevant, negative, or too much like a sales pitch, and will decrease your ranking in your followers newsfeed which will decrease your organic reach where people will not see your posts. Facebook will PENALIZE for
A Few Busted MythsMYTH: Scheduling through a third party will hurt my reach. When using social media tool like Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social, you might see less engagement, however it may not be about the tool as much as the content. “Posting through a third party social media management platform will not harm your organic reach on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social network. It won’t improve your reach either—effectively, it’s the same as posting natively.” Maxwell Gollin, Faclcon.IO May 22, 2018 https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/topics/social-media-management/why-using-third-party-social-media-management-tools-wont-hurt-your-reach/#/GEN MYTH: A post with a link to another website will automatically limit my reach. We have been told Facebook will limit reach when making a post with out bound links to a website or blog. When in truth your website you are linking to is what may be holding you back. Websites that are not mobile friendly, have large images or have slow load times for any reason are bumped down in Facebook user’s feeds because a viewer’s attention is lost when having to wait. “If you want to maximize your organic reach on Facebook, you need to ensure that your web page has lightning fast load times (especially considering how organic reach has been dropping lately).” “To be clear, Facebook actually prefers link posts with preview images (what pulls directly from the website automatically) over photo posts with links in the captions. According to their research, links in the link post format receive over twice as many link clicks on average as links buried in photo captions.” Maxwell Gollin, Falcon.IO Aug. 5 2018 https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/case-stories/cs-social-media-strategy/optimize-your-facebook-links-in-2018/#/GEN MYTH: Does a new Facebook Algorithm Only Show You 26 Friends? Why would they do this and only limit you to 26 friends? It goes against their business model of eventually dominating the world! Seriously, be very cautious of things like this as well as the funny apps and games. Just don’t. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-facebook-algorithm-26-friends/ Ads Reign SupremeFacebook considers paid ads the highest form of communication and will protect the functionality of your ad. It WILL pop up in your customers feed when they are on their device. And there are a lot of analytics that will prove it’s productivity. You have a choice to “boost” a post or “create and ad.”
Boosting vs. Paid Ads Boosting posts has low conversion, doesn’t allow you to target users and only targets any user who happens to be online. Much like a bill board, they have to see it when they are on their device and paying attention. Great for events, live feed videos, time relative posts you want people to see immediately to your followers at an event that you are all participating in, but not something that needs targeting. Create an Ad From Your Post Control your post by creating an ad from the post, choose your target audience, location and EVERYONE who is in your criteria WILL see this in their feed. The beauty of Facebook ads! To do this, go to Ads Manager > All tools > Page Posts > Published Posts > Find the post > Actions. Now set your objective for the ad. Note: You can’t edit anything when creating an ad from the post, but it carries the comments and engagement with it (which is social media gold!) In a time where there is nothing as sure as change, I hope this takes some of the mystery out of Facebook for you and your business. Be confident that you are in control and you are using the most effective tool in advertising today! |
Sarah ThurstensonGraphic Designer with awesome clients, happy wife, mother of two with a thought about this and that, Sarah is also the owner and instructor for Something From Nothing Paint Parties-On location custom canvas painting parties. Archives
February 2020
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