Get to grips with a little used but highly effective ad type

Sponsored Stories have been one of the most consistently effective ad types I use to get people to click to my Facebook Page. The reason these work so well is that they point users towards a Page or piece of content that their friends are engaging with. When someone interacts with your Page, app, or event it creates a story that their friends may see in News Feed but it's also quite easy to miss. Brands can of course pay to sponsor these stories so more people will see it when their friends have engaged with you on Facebook. Of course this brings a level of social proof or tacit recommendation which is one of the reasons Sponsored Stories are so effective. Here's a typical right hand ad created by a conventional Sponsored Story: …

The End of PTAT and Virality measures as they are broken out?

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Facebook blog announcement If you’re a Facebook Admin, watch out for changes to Facebook Page Insights, the analytics tool for monitoring the performance of your Facebook Pages. Product Marketing Manager Galyn Burke told Techcrunch that this is the first time the Page Insights interface has been updated since October 2011. As with many Facebook changes, this has not been rolled out internationally yet, we’re not seeing it yet, but will update this post when it becomes more widely available. In the meantime, here is a preview of the new interface: The relevant update from Facebook is shown below - this suggests that, in what looks to me a backwards step, PTAT will be retired in favour of breaking out its components. Having an aggregate engagement measures is…

A tutorial on how to use Facebook's Power Editor

If you are a regular advertiser on Facebook you really ought to be using Power Editor to create your ads rather than the standard self serve ad tool interface. Facebook's own help pages explain why. There are a number of advantages such as placements and custom audiences that you can only access via this tool. Power Editor is easy to set up since it's a Chrome Extension.

It's not the most user friendly tool imaginable but there are plenty of online help articles and videos to help you. There's also a helpful Power Editor guide to download here.

Facebook Offers

I first wrote a simple guide to Facebook Offers last September. Since then the fees have gone up dramatically, so many will be asking what can we do to reduce costs and improve effectiveness?

One answer is to create your offer via Power Editor.…

Examples of how Facebook covers can be now used more for promotion

Did you know that companies can now use marketing messages and promotions on their Facebook page cover? This gives opportunities for front cover pages to become more engaging using offers and call to actions to fit in with their social media goals. Looking to promote an event, run a competition, poll or coupon promotion? You can now promote it through your timeline cover alongside apps like Shortstack or other social media campaign tools). Remember though, that you should check the Facebook Page guidelines. So we decided to review some Facebook timeline covers to showcase the different ways you can enhance your company page. Please share your views and other examples with us. Next is an engaging page. They use their timeline to showcase their latest range of clothes, with competitions and very visual showcase…

The Facebook Studio 2013 winners for marketing creativity in different business categories

This year, Facebook ran their 'Facebook Studio Awards'  to highlight the brands who are leveraging Facebook well and executed creative marketing campaigns, without the use of paid advertising. We thought his alert would be useful to inspire ideas for Facebook pages you manage, so we have categorised the winning pages in different business categories. The Top award was 'Blue' for Oreo's 100th anniversary campaign -  with 100 ads over 100 days, sharing news stories projected on Times Square Billboards which were crowdsourced in real-time by their Fans. Generated over 1 million Facebook interactions in 100 days and shares. Source: Facebook We have categorised the award-winning campaigns so you can get your 'creative…

Creating Custom Audiences, Lookalikes on Facebook, relaxed rules on cover images and nested replies

There has been (yet another) exciting new development rolled out by Facebook for advertisers recently - the Lookalike audience targeting feature. As you may have read in the many announcements, Lookalikes are a way of you targeting audiences similar to your current customer database (or existing Facebook fans). In this post I thought I'd go beyond a summary of the features and show what's involved in setting it up. Here are my experiences, do share yours!

A short guide to setting up Facebook Lookalike targeting

To access the facility you need to be using Power Editor to create your ads and manage your target audiences. Power Editor is a free Chrome plugin. It's not the most user-friendly plugin out there but without it (or a third-party app which uses the Facebook API) you won't be able to access…

The development of Facebook's strategy including business and revenue model

You use Facebook, but have you ever wondered about its business model and how it has evolved? In my E-business and E-commerce Management book we have reviewed the development of Facebook for over six years now. I think it's still a great case study for both students and professionals to learn from, since it shows many of the success factors needed for a new start-up, including the risks of alienating users when their privacy needs are not listened to.

It’s incredible that Facebook now has more than a billion monthly active users worldwide, yet has fewer than 5,000 employees.

In this case study which we aim to keep up-to-date between the new editions of my books, I have structured the review of Facebook strategy using some of the customer-related aspects of the Business Model Canvas.

Facebook's value proposition

In 2013, the Facebook mission is simply to 'make…

What does Facebook Home mean for Marketers?

Mark Zuckerberg finally unveiled  Facebook's mobile device strategy earlier in April. After a continuous swirl of rumours speculating the arrival of the Facebook phone from when All Things D first reported on project ‘Buffy’ back in 2011,  rather than building its own smartphone, as originally anticipated, Facebook has launched Home, its new software for Android operating systems. The app will see users’ traditional home screen and menu replaced with ‘CoverFeed’, which displays Facebook notifications, images and message.

So why the decision to create software rather than hardware?

Free to download, the app can effectively be accessed by any of the 680m mobile users who own an Android device. As Zuckerberg said himself: 'We're not building a phone, and we're not…

Check the effectiveness of your company page with the new mobile page layout

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Facebook new mobile layout

Our commentary on the new Facebook mobile design

Facebook has always worked hard to optimise mobile customer experience since this is a common access mode. In this update announced on 23rd April it has updated company pages so its users can find information efficiently on their mobile devices. It's now live and these are some of the changes we can expect to benefit from: More prominence of most used features and information such as photos and location - relevant for multichannel retailers. The Top page now includes our 'Likes, Call Message and Share'. Page owners will see benefits including their important posts (offers and videos) appearing higher on their page on mobile devices and easier switching between public and admin views. …

Have you tried Facebook's Promoted Pages yet?

I noticed something new in my admin panel last week. Yep, I'd finally got Promoted Pages rolled out to me. Sometimes I think I'm the last admin on the planet to get the new features. Promoted Pages is a really simple way to get more Likes to your Page but it does come with a few caveats and warnings.

#1 It's a rolling program

You choose your daily budget and carry on spending until you stop the ad. Helpfully Facebook shows the metrics in your Page admin without having to dig around though so you should have it as a constant reminder.

#2 It's not very targeted

One of the beauties of Facebook advertising is the platform's targeting ability. Promoted Pages will (at least until you tweak some settings) blanket target everyone in your selected geographic area (and all friends of fans).

#3 The ad copy isn't what you think

As…