Facebook has been rolling out several new features this past week! One that is really getting a lot of attention is the new “promote” feature which allows pages with more than 400 fans the opportunity to pay to have their posts promoted to a wider audience. Sad that we have to pay to target our own fans but it is what it is!
This new feature is an alternative to Facebook advertising and it allows us to extend the visibility of our content provided we pay a fee. We can pay $5, $10, $15 or $20 to “get more people who like our Page to see our posts. Promoted posts will assure you that more of your fans see particular posts. This will be a great tool to highlight special things in your business; like a product launch or an event, for example.
For as low as $5 your ‘promoted post’ will be featured in the news stream with a label ‘sponsored’. One added advantage to this ‘promoted post’ is when a Facebook friend likes or comments on your post, their friends will now see it as well. This gives us more exposure, for a fee of course!
You are given an option to promote for $5, $10, $15 or $20. Beside each price will be an estimated reach which will vary according to the price.
Once you determine what price you would like to pay, you can then things like how long you want the post to be promoted and your preferred payment method. Although you are not able to choose a date and time that you would like your promotion to begin you do have the option to stop and restart a promotion manually.
This is what your 'live' post will look like in your fans news feed.
Once your post is 'live', you can click on the 'promoted' button and see statistics such as the "paid reach" and the "budget spent". Promoted posts are automatically scheduled for 3 days and you can track this using the promoted button.
If you click the settings button in this menu, you can change your payment method, pause or stop the promotion.
Another neat feature is that Facebook will allow you to promote already live posts, but only if they are less than 3 days old. Facebook's algorithm focuses on new and current content so anything beyond 3 days is off limits for this promotion feature. For example, if you posted something yesterday that you would like to promote, you can set up a promotion simply by following the steps above.
HINT: Posting prior to setting up the promotion is a great way to make sure that everything looks 'good' before you spend money on the promotion.
It will be interesting to see how this new feature will affect the views of your posts on your Facebook fan page. It is getting mixed reviews at the moment but so far, I think I really like this option. I have been testing it and have found that while my percentage of fans reached has not dramatically increased, my 'talking about numbers' have doubled! I would suggest giving it a try and see what happens for you. The money spent is nominal and a great way to dip your toe in and see how effective it will be for your business.
What do you think? Will you take the plunge and experiment with this new option?
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Great summary Kim (I got here at last!!). I'm not quite at 400 yet, but once I get there I'll definitely be using this feature for some of the posts I want to be sure get seen. I think we have to accept that if we want to use Facebook most effectively for business it becomes part of our paid advertising strategy. Still better than a lot of the offline paid advertising I reckon with the targetting details we can tap into. Thanks for keeping us informed 🙂
Tanya
Glad you dropped by 😉
This is really interesting Kim.
Thank you Kim, this is extremely helpful. I love your newsletters – they are full of great information for small businesses.
Thanks Gale!
I've been using it and I have to say it's working very well, a lot better than general facebook advertising. In fact I'm going to shift my entire budget to this as it's a lot more focused and effective. Promoting relevant content that people can engage with is proving a lot more effective than same old ads that everyone ignores..!
I am very pleased with the results as well. It stands to reason if our fans liked us at one point in time, that many of they will still like our content, etc.
Absolutely 😉
I have been using it more and more and am loving it! Getting very positive results with it and ultimately, I think it is a great tool to get our content out to our fan base. In fact, it is the only way outside of Facebook ads since Facebook controls what our fans see.
Thanks Volker!
Please do! I would love to know how it goes!
That’s awesome Theresa!
Yes they sure do 🙂
The new Facebook sponsored ads are amazing.. especially the ones on the timeline!
I agree! Thanks for stopping by Jessica!