Facebook - I Knew It Would Work!

Social Marketing 

Interesting article on eMarketer.com today.  Paid Social Ads Convert More Customers.  

It turns out that paid ads are out performing organic content on Facebook.  "Paid ads on social networks do have better conversion rates than organic content."

I believe this is happening for two reasons.  First, the targeting abilities for Facebook continue to improve. Any information that you voluntarily added to your Facebook account - single, married, divorced, engaged, work, education, birthdate, gender, interests, relationships...  You get the idea...  Allows marketers to target you with ads.

Facebook's abilities to target specific consumer segments continue to deliver to advertisers.  For example, we used Facebook to target ads for a client sponsoring a "Wedding Expo".  Facebook allowed us to target single, engaged, females, 21-45, within 50 miles of Toledo.  This audience targeting allowed us to reduce the Facebook distribution from 380,000 "individuals" to 5,200 women who fit the target defined above. 

The second and equally as important a reason - "Mutability is life's sole constant" - is the changes Facebook makes in its algorithm for posting to your news feed.  When Facebook launched, everything you posted to your timeline was viewable to everyone connected to you through fans/likes.  As Facebook evolved its revenue model, it found it profitable to throttle back the number of followers that could view your postings into their timeline.  Today it is estimated that your posts are only able to be viewed by 16% of your followers. This "select 16%" is controlled by a complicated algorithm that weighs a variety of factors, but they try to weight your followers and display only the most pertinent posts to the followers they feel are the most connected to your post.

If you want more of your followers to see your newsfeed posts, you will need to use Facebook's Boost program.  After posting your message, you can click on the Boost icon on the bottom right of your post.  If you want to see how this works, follow this link for Facebook Boost.  In addition to boosting distribution to your own followers, Boost allows you to target new audiences based on - you guessed it - the information you surrendered to Facebook as you set up and modified your Facebook account.

So now you know how it pays to be social.  If you want to learn more, shoot me an email....  Jeff@ThriveIM.com.  

P.S. Just saw a great article that talks more about Facebook targeting...  Here is the link... 


What Facebook's Evolving Social Graph Means for Content Marketers

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2014/25933/what-facebooks-evolving-social-graph-means-for-content-marketers#ixzz3D2CfrSTF