Facebook’s Promoted posts are live for some pages in the US, as of yesterday. And are rolling out to many more. Some are reporting that pages with fewer than 500 fans may not yet see the feature.
This means pages can now pay to “promote” a post from their Timeline so that it will reach a greater percentage of their fans on Facebook.
This feature has been reported on for the last month or so as being beta tested.
The starting price for promoting individual posts is $5.00 and the highest price $300.00. The promotion stretches across a 3 day period according to Facebook:
“When you promote a post, it will be shown in the news feeds of more of the people who like your Page than you would reach normally. Friends of the people who have interacted with your post will also be more likely to see the story in their news feeds for up to 3 days from when the post was first created.”
What are you paying for?
The price range is reported from $5 to $300 options. The Social Fresh page (~13k fans) sees the below options from $5 to $75. The number of fans you can reach at each level varies according to your page and fan count.
What about people who already like my page?
Nothing has actually changed for people who already like your page or how posts from your page are shared with them.
All promoted posts will appear in the news feeds of the people who already like your page and if they interact with your promoted post it will be also be seen by their friends.
With these posts, they will be labeled “sponsored” posts in the news feed, but instead of ads in the column on Facebook, your promoted post will actually be in the news feed and in mobile news feeds… BONUS.
How to use promoted posts on Facebook:
- To activate the feature, you must do so by creating a new status
- Click on promote at the bottom of the status form
- Select the price and number of fans for the post to be promoted to.
- Click save, post and over the next 3 days the post will be promoted to a larger section of your Facebook fans
After you successfully promote a new status, other recent status updates will have a “promote” link on the bottom right.
Metrics: Measure the Success
You can also see the effectiveness of the promoted ad in real time stats listed under the ad that include:
- Activity: The number of times your page was tagged in photos by other people on Facebook
Reach: The percentage of fans who saw your post
Uniques: The number of people that saw the post via organic, viral, and paid.
Metrics Summary: Includes exact number of fans that saw your ad because of promotion, budget spent, total budget, end date, and the activity generated — including post likes, tab views, comments, and page likes.
You can stop the promotion at any time you chose. It’s very simple to do under the Ad Manager section on Facebook.
Facebook provides full ad analytics including optimized CPM equivalent, reach, clicks, actions, and more for all promoted posts. They are listed in the ads manager like any other ad.
What types of posts should you promote?
Facebook has actually covered this in their help section already (as reported to Bonfire) and suggests the following:
- Vibrant photos and videos
- Offers (still in beta)
- Exclusive events or news
- Questions
Where will these ads be seen?
The new promoted posts will be in your regular news feed and in mobile news feed, which we all know is important since brands have been testing mobile ads more and more.
With these new types of posts, Facebook ads are completely changing and allowing marketers to really put their message out there for a price. This could become a powerful tool to reach more people who like your brand.
The other question is, of course, if everyone starts paying to promote their posts, will organic page updates see lower and lower results as the newsfeed gets more crowded with paid posts?