Over the last couple months there has been a lot of buzz surrounding Facebook’s promoted post feature. Facebook rolled out this new paid promotion feature at the end of May. It allows a Brand Page owner to pay to push their content to a broader audience than normal. Normally when you post something to your Brand Page only a small percentage of your fans actually see that content, this percent varies based on how much your fans engage and interact with your page. This can make it hard to quickly grow your Facebook Marketing campaign and that’s where promoted posts come in.
Facebook uses a complex algorithm called EdgeRank to determine what content each user sees on their news feed. However, you have the power to now override that by dedicating up to $100 to promote a recent post on your brand page. Facebook says “Your promoted posts will be seen by a larger percentage of the people who like your page than would normally see it. It will also be seen by a larger percentage of the friends of people who interact with your post.” So just by paying a little, or a lot, of extra money you can reach a broader audience including more friends of people who like your page, making it more likely that you will get more engagement and grow your fan base.
Similarly Facebook has another tool that will “promote” a post you’ve made on your brand page. Facebook’s Sponsored Story is essentially a Facebook ad created right in the Facebook Ad Platform. You can select targeting for certain segments of the user population among other customizations. The difference is that Sponsored Stories look like Facebook ads and will appear on the right side of the page with all the other ads, and they mostly target people who aren’t fans of your page. These can be good for getting more fans but they do nothing for your engagement. On the other hand since Promoted Posts show up right in the user’s news feed they are more likely to be clicked on and will promote more engagement on your page.
Need help managing your Facebook Marketing Campaign? Having trouble getting engagement from your fans? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your current Facebook campaign and advice on how you can improve.