The other day I was doing a demo for someone and noticed that my Facebook Page had an extra icon in the status update box. I clicked, and to my surprise, it was "Add Targeting." But here's what you need to know:
- This is News Feed targeting, not post targeting. Anyone who comes to your Facebook Page can still see these posts. It just limits who can see them in their News Feed.
- The more targeting filters you add, the fewer people you will target.
- The minimum number of people you can target a post to is 20.
- You cannot use this organic type of targeted post to lookalike audiences, that's only available in the ad platform.
I only have it available on one of the Pages that I manage. It has not yet been rolled out to the rest. Here's what I get when I click into the status update box to write a post or add a picture/video/link:
There's a new icon. When I click on that icon, I get the option to Add Targeting:
When I click on the "Add Targeting" pull down, I get these options:
Now, these targeting options are optimal if you want to target a specific location or age range, or language. If you own a dating website or relationship website, then the Relationship Status or Interested In (men or women) might be of interest. If you run a school then the Educational Status might be useful. Or if you are looking to hire new grads, then Educational Status might be useful to target those folks. And of course marketing your posts by gender, might also be useful if you are predominantly a female or male organization but occasionally have content for the opposite sex that wouldn't be applicable to the other.
The most useful is probably location and language. Location lets you target down to the city, which is great for organizations or companies that have a larger fan base, but are hosting a local event, for example. However, you've always had the ability to do that (under where it says Public). What's the difference? This is a News Feed target, not a post target. Anyone who comes to your Page can still see these posts, they are just targeted in the News Feed. Adding News Feed targeting does not affect who can see the post on your Facebook Page. This is unlike limiting your Post Audience (below). When you limit your post audience by location or language only those people who have that language or location in their profile will be able to see the Page post in search, News Feed, and on your Facebook Page.
As you limit your targeting, you can see how many people that post has the "potential" of reaching (it's not guaranteed). Anyone else who falls outside of that target will not see your post in their News Feed, but if they come to your Facebook Page they will (but we all know 90% of folks never come back to our Page once they "like" it). Here's an example of limiting my post to just target San Francisco and San Jose, CA.
Out of 744 fans, it will target 40 people, and then the post is subjected to Facebook's algorithm like all of the other Page posts.
But keep in mind, the more targeting filters you add, the fewer people you will target.
So what do you think, is this useful? Does it have potential? If you think it has potential you can give Facebook feedback here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/266897100086640
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