Over the last few months Facebook has come out with a raft of changes, feature enhancements and new releases. It can be tough as a business owner to keep up with these changes and understand how they affect your business. As a Social Media Consultant I even find it hard so to make things easier for you here are the two most important changes that have occurred and how they could affect your business.
Facebook Ads Go Mobile!
The first update Facebook has announced is that ads will now be shown in the mobile newsfeed. For advertisers this will allow you to directly target mobile users with your ads. Considering the size of Facebook's mobile audience this move was predictable for Facebook in their effort to further monetize their business model.
As part of this new feature release when setting up your advertising in Facebook there are now 5 different advertising display options that you can choose from:
- All placements. News Feed desktop, right-hand side desktop, News Feed mobile.
- All desktop placements. News Feed desktop, right-hand side desktop.
- News Feed desktop and mobile placements. News Feed desktop and News Feed mobile.
- News Feed desktop placements. News Feed desktop only.
- News Feed mobile placements. News Feed mobile only.
As you can see the 5 placement options allow for improved tracking and return on investment reporting. A quick tip would be to split up your advertising so that you have single campaigns targeting single placements. Most adwords professional do this when setting up Google Adwords accounts and the same practice would be beneficial for Facebook Advertising.
Promoted Posts - Reach More Users
The second update Facebook has announced is Fan Pages can now promote selected posts to increase the number of users the post reaches. This was controversially tested in New Zealand and instead of being just for Fan Pages was allowed for regular users as well.
The business application of this promoted post feature will allow Fan Pages to increase the reach of their promotional messages and provide potential further monetization of Fans.
Facebook has made it extremely simple to promote a post, all you need to do is select the "Promote" button on the selected post, set a budget and then pay using the credit card associated with your Facebook account. Prior to saving you will be shown the estimated reach the promoted post will have so you can estimate the Cost Per Impression investment.
These two changes have extended the paid advertising capabilities of Facebook and will allow businesses to experiment and test the results of investing in Facebook ads. As a business owner and a Facebook Fan Page owner there are endless possibilities of what you can test and measure with these new enhancements.
My recommendation is to ignore the bad press about the potential "returns" Facebook ads give and test it out for yourself!