Out of all the recent changes to Facebook (scheduled posts, admin roles, etc), the Promoted Posts feature is definitely the most controversial.
To be honest, I've been dreading this post. Mainly because it could be so entirely massive if I let it be!
I don't proclaim to know everything but I'll explain the things I DO know, the things I recently learned and link to other articles about Promoted Posts that you'll probably be interested in. Let's get to it!
Promoted Posts essentially allow you to pay Facebook a fee to reach a larger amount of your fan base than you would otherwise. If you're looking for how to do promoted posts, I'll let PC World tell you since their article 5 Tips for Using Facebook's Promoted Posts pretty much sums it up.
Instead this post will stick with some facts about promoted posts since there seem to be a lot of misconceptions out there.
The Biggest Misconception about Facebook Promoted Posts
Let's start with the clearing up the biggest misconception I've seen out there.
Fact: Your posts were NOT being seen by 100% of fans before promoted posts took effect.
In fact, earlier this year Facebook said that a status update from a fan page reaches about 16% of their total audience. SIXTEEN PERCENT. And for personal profiles? A typical post from a personal profile only reaches about 12% of your friends. Yeah, that's pretty lame. No denying that.
Facebook uses something called Edgerank to score each post you write, whether it's your fan page OR your personal profile. That score determines how likely you are to show up in someone's feed. Photos and videos typically do best, meaning they'll be more likely for your audience to see it. Though only Facebook knows their exact algorithm, this is an excellent run through of how Edgerank works.
In one of Facebook's marketing webinars I attended recently (they're free if you're interested), Facebook explained that the reason not every post shows up in the news feed is that they want to give users the “best experience and highest relevance” so using Edgerank helps them determine what shows up in your feed.
If Facebook posted everything in our new feeds, our feeds would zoom past us for the most part just do to the sheer amount of updates from friends and pages. While I don't want the Facebook news feed to breeze by me as fast as Twitter moves, both of those numbers being under 20% bothers me.
There may not have been a light switch that suddenly flipped to make your posts not get seen… but the problem is that for many fan pages, engagement HAS decreased over time. Even though Edgerank has been around for quite a while, I know many, many pages have seen gradual decreases in engagement and reach way before Promoted Posts even existed, which makes this new “product” frustrating.
Despite all the frustration (I feel it too!), it's important to understand that even if all your posts made it to news feeds, you'd never reach 100% of your fans because people simply aren't on Facebook all day long watching their feed. (But keep reading because I have some ideas for you at the end of this post!)
Moving along, there are some other facts about Promoted Posts that I learned in that webinar…
Question: Why am I not seeing the option for Promoted Posts?
If your fan page has fewer than 400 fans, you won't see the Promoted Post option yet. Facebook said they feel you need at least 400 fans before you would see success with Promoted Posts. If your fan page has greater than 100,000 fans, it's not available to you yet (thought they said they may remove this limit in the future).
Question: Are there any restrictions for doing a Promoted Post?
Yep. A post has to be less than three days old in order to be promoted. However, you can promote a post as you are publishing it OR go back to an already published post and turn it into a Promoted Post (if it's within that 3-day window).
Question: Will my Promoted Posts be labeled in any way?
Yep, they will say “Sponsored” underneath them.
Question: Can I post to my fan page without doing paid posts?
Absolutely. You only pay if you want to reach more people.
Question: I've been seeing a lot of people posting status updates to visit their fan page and select “Show in News Feed” to ensure posts show up. Does this work?
Well, if you saw that page's post in your feed, then I'm sure you clicked to their fan page to discover the “Show in News Feed” was already selected. And if “Show in News Feed” was somehow not selected for someone, would they have even seen that status update show up in their news feed in the first place? I looked at pages that I've fanned but couldn't remember seeing a status update in recent memory. Even those pages already had it checked.
Some people have said that after a while Facebook will uncheck that “Show in News Feed” if it's a page you haven't interacted with in a long time, but I couldn't find an example of that in my page list. (If you had a different experience, please tell me in the comments! I'd love to be proven wrong on this but my first thought is that doing this won't help at all.)
So What CAN You Do?
I've got three ideas for you to help more fan page posts get seen. The first two you can do within your own profile (and even ask your fans to do so) that will help you see the updates from pages you like the best. The last one is how to get more eyeballs on the posts you make to your fan page.
1. Change your news feed to Sort: Most Recent
If you'd prefer to see all the status updates in your feed in chronological order, then it's an easy change.
2. Add Pages you like to Facebook lists.
And friends you like for that matter. I have lists of Favorite Pages, Close Friends, My Costa Rican Family, etc.
If you want to share this with your blog readers, don't just mention this on Facebook because obviously not everyone is seeing it. Mention it on your blog as well. Here's a simple 1-2-3 on how to add a fan page to an Interest List.
3. Write posts that are engaging.
Not every single post you do on Facebook will be a zinger. And the truth is posting your latest blog post will get less interaction on Facebook. Why? Because people are more likely to take action by clicking on the post rather than leaving a comment.
In the Facebook webinar, they said that posts with 100-250 characters in about 1-2 lines of text have about 60% more engagement. So keep 'em short and engaging. Here's an example:
Again, keep in mind you won't ever reach 100%. Our page posts never reached 100%, even before Promoted Posts. But is it reasonable to reach 50%? I've had it happen. I had a post start around 17% and the more people engaged, the higher it climbed. All the way to 59%!
However, for pages with more fans than me (I have around 1,425), it will be much harder to move that needle upward. It seem that the larger the audience, the harder it is to reach more of your fans (but that's just my observations and the observations of people I know who manage large pages).
I hope this post helped clear up some of the mystery around Promoted Posts! I'd love to hear your thoughts and any experiences you've had with Promoted Posts thus far.
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Hey- I'm Melissa! I'm a mom, side hustler, online course instructor, and brand marketer. I run a 6-figure blog helping online biz owners find their a-ha moments with can-do tips, tutorials, and online courses. I also work at Burt's Bees as the Social Media Strategist (yep, it's as cool as it sounds). Jump start your biz productivity with my free worksheet!
Thanks for this Melissa!!! It is all so confusing, and you always want to stay on top of the latest changes.
Thanks so much for this information packed post, Melissa! Very helpful!
So all of this brings up a big question in my mind?? Should we be heavily promoting that people like/follow us on facebook then? If someone is following/subscribing to my blog SOLELY by facebook, it just seems risky to me. They will miss posts, miss photos, miss status updates, etc. (mostly worried about the missing posts part.)
Is there a way to help with that? I have considered posting my new blog post 2-3 times on facebook hoping that each time it would a different group of 10-20% of my followers. Maybe once in the morning right after publishing, then again in the evening when people are home from work and on facebook, then maybe the next day too? And maybe one of those times be by uploading a really good photo from the post and then the link to the post in the description?
What do you think about that? Or is this a topic for a whole new post? LOL! 🙂
Great question, Christina, and one I have as well! Looking forward to the answer, Melissa!
Great question! I think that no matter where people are subscribed to you, there’s not a marketing tool out there that will reach 100% of your audience. For example, only 13% – 30% of email subscribers even OPEN emails (http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-marketing-benchmarks-by-industry/) and we all know how fast Twitter streams go. Even if someone is subscribed to your blog via RSS feed, it’s unlikely they’re seeing every post in their Reader (unless they only subscribe to a handful of sites).
So I wouldn’t NOT direct people to Facebook because of that. I’d also steer clear with too much of the same promotion on Facebook. Our timelines are like stories of our brand/blog and it’s generally considered a best practice not to repeat blog posts on Facebook (unlike Twitter where it flows faster). A new fan coming to your fan page may be turned off in multiple posts in a row where similar. If anything, you may try doing it once like usual and then the next week post a link to your most popular post from the week before. Just a suggestion.
Hope that helps answer your questions!
Good article, Melissa! I’m learning stuff from you, as usual!
I hate stuff like this. I want to sigh and ignore it. (Although I’m not up to 400 fans yet so I suppose there’s not much I can do about it anyway.)
One question- I’ve seen some fan pages post a status basically saying “like this post and the next few you see from me so my updates will keep appearing in your news feed”. Any word on whether that works? It seems to me that the pages I engage with are the ones that more regularly show up for me.
I’ve been told that doesn’t work BUT like you I see things in my feed from pages I interact with most. Wish I had a better answer!
I read an article previously that said FB’s algorithm values comments and page visits – not so much likes. People have to do more than click a button to boost your visibility – they have to actually interact.
@melissa – thank you SO much for this article. Many of us have tried to correct the misconceptions one FB friend at a time (without much luck) – kudos for having the patience to write it all out. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
This is a fantastic post – I’ve been WAITING for this since you mentioned it on FB!
I just checked my page (i only have 45 likes) but i’m reaching 80% on them on most of my posts so I’m very happy with that. I’m going to watch the percentages and see if they changed based on what I write (text only, photos, links etc)
Thanks for all the handy info!! x
It makes sense that larger pages will have a smaller percent. i have 6529 fans on http://www.facebook.com/healnowandforever and the highest I have is in the teens. But that still means well over a thousand people. You are right about blog posts, not being interacted with, but since so much traffic is coming from Facebook (50% for me) I know the post are working even though no one is commenting there. Or liking.
Jodi
I agree! Facebook brings me the most referral traffic so I KNOW people are clicking. you can also make your links bit.ly links and track the clicks and you want to see how many people are actually clicking over!
Congrats on having over 6000 fans- that’s awesome!
Thanks for keeping us in the loop! It’s so crazy how rapidly FB is growing and changing!
Thank you for this post! Facebook denied my request to change my page’s name when I changed the name of my blog & then 2 days later, they rolled out the promoted post thing & I was thisclose to just saying, “Alright, I’m out.” But this makes me feel a wee bit less hopeless. 🙂
This is so helpful, Melissa! Thank you. I’ve gotten a few emails from Facebook promoting free ads for my blog and thought that was the Promoted Post option. So confusing! I’m still not clear on what you said about promoting lists – how and why? I’m looking forward to reading your replies to the questions above also. Thanks!
Mary- The lists are really for you rather than anything to do with promoting. If you create a list of your favorite pages, you can quickly click on that list and see their recent posts that might have otherwise gotten lost in a busy news feed (or not shown at all). Does that make sense?
To do this, just click on Interests from the left side of your Facebook profile and follow the steps (the image in my post should help guide you with that). Thanks!
Great article Melissa!
This is a GREAT and informative post – thank you for sharing! I think it’s also important to note the math – that percent is OF FANS. OFten, you are reaching more people than 15-25% or whatever the post says. Sure, you may be reaching only 25% of your fans, BUT – the number noted compared to the number “reached” according to the stats under the post often denote that more people are being reached,they are just not fans yet (I talk more about it here: http://www.moderndaydonnareed.com/2012/05/open-letter-to-facebook-powers-that-be.html). Like – if I have 750 fans, and a post only reaches 35%, that’s so-so. But if you see that the # of people reached is 550 – that’s WAY more than 35%. And I think that while it stinks current fans might not be seeing everything – I love that there are POTENTIAL fans interacting with content. I also love how you are encouraging quality posts and working on interaction. I’ve not seen any decrease on my page – it’s grown. But I’ve also been working hard to create genuine relationships. I think bloggers and page admins need to see their fan pages as more than a landing spot for new blog posts or promos. It needs to be a place of COMMUNITY – where brands/bloggers/etc interact with their fans. THANK you again for this post – love it!
Such great points! And thanks for sharing your post– off to check it out!
Can I just say, “amen”?? 🙂
I kinda wonder if Facebook had rolled out the individual % reached/count numbers several weeks before the sponsored post stuff, if some of this wouldn’t have blown up so much. Because there are some people who seem to think that Facebook pulled back on the % reached as a way to force their promoted posts, even though, like you said, it’s always been this way.
Liz – I’ve been kind of wondering if Facebook is purposely been hazy on things. not that they haven’t spelled it out – but most people aren’t aware of how it worked. These percentages seemed to pop up over night. And as I said in the post above – the % and # reached doesn’t match – because it’s not clear without some clicking and reading that % is about FANS reached, not ALL people reached. I get that Facebook is publicly traded and obligated to make money now – so I don’t down them for the promoted posts (Twitter does it right?) – but I think the % next to # reached is purposely deceiving, so people will think – oh man, I need to reach more people! I need to buy a post!
Or is that too conspiracy theorist? 🙂
The count and %s not matching drive me batty. Absolutely! It’s interesting because I just read a post with some anecdotal evidence that the promoted posts don’t offer much. http://inklingmedia.net/2012/06/12/facebooks-promoted-posts-are-they-worth-the-cost-and-effort/
Ohhhhhh – that’s a great post! Lengthy – but just goes to show some “real” experimentation with promoted posts. I’ve had several bloggy friends try it – and some saw NO improvement in views/interaction/%. So what are you REALLY paying for (except a publicly-traded company?).
You know I wonder if the reason they don’t match is because you may have only reached x% of your audience BUT non-fans must count in the # of people reached (for example, when someone likes a post, it will show up in their profile, reaching others who saw “melissa liked x.” Maybe? Sorta? Perhaps?
It absolutely is!
Really great post Melissa!
Thanks, Melissa! That was very helpful.
I was going to do a post about this on my site so everyone that wanted to could add me to a list but I can’t even find the “interest” tab on my personal site myself. So this is confusing to me.
great post Melissa! providing us this useful information is really a big help. I know that a lot of people will benefit from this. Thanks and i’m looking forward to read more from you.
It’s hard keeping up with all the changes on Facebook. Your insights are always so helpful! Thank you, Melissa!
Thanks for this awesome blog post Mel! It’s so informative, which it really helps a lot to your readers as well as to Facebook users.
Wow, thanks so much for explaining this. I had NO idea how low the percentage of people who see my Facebook page posts were. Sure, I figured some “fans” didn’t see every post because they’re not on Facebook every minute, but I didn’t realize Facebook pretty much NEVER sends it out to 100% of your fans.
On the opposite end, *I* didn’t realize *I* may be missing some posts from pages I like either! I thought if I liked a fan page, that told facebook to send me ALL their updates. So maybe when I think gee, so-and-so isn’t posting much, maybe they ARE posting, but it’s not showing up in my feed. Good to know.
Also, I must have spent over an hour on here reading a bunch of your terrific posts! So many helpful things for a Newbie like myself! You got yourself a new twitter follower and a new Facebook fan!
I feel more confused about this now than before…
Fabulous post with lots of great info and resources, written in such an accessible way. It’s my first time on your blog, and I am already a fan. Awesome work, and looking forward to more!
p.s. – just noticed that you’ve got the article tagged under “pinterest” – did you mean to file it under “facebook?”
Thank you so much for clearing the FB promotional posts issue up for me! It is a nightmare reading everything on facebook groups where no one really knows what they are talking about but where everyone always has an opinion! I just ran my first promotional post today, we’ll see how it goes.
Thanks again, and keep the great ideas coming!
Bobbie Anne
BlogWithMom
Thanks for this insight. I was becoming more and more frustrated by the reach of my page CruiseLegend. First you invest a lot of time, energy and money to get your audience. Now that you have them, you can’t even reach them. I understand 100% in impossible but I would expect to show up at least in 2000 of my 3300 followers. They liked my page, so why necessary to change settings? I think it is very frustrating Facebook now asks to pay to promote your post when you have already paid to get the follower through advertisement on Facebook.
Thanks for this. I get on fine with Twitter but I’m really struggling to get any traction with Facebook.
I promoted a post on my work page today (Dr. Rene and Parenting Playgroups) and it is showing up on our page on our phones but not on our computers. Is there a way to have it show up on our page – all previous promoted posts showed up on both?
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