On the heels of Facebook’s IPO bust, they launched a feature that now allows you to promote your Facebook posts so that more of your fans will see it. (Your page must have at least 400 Likes.)
All promoted posts will show up as a “Sponsored Listing” in your fan’s feeds.
Statistics have already proven that Facebook users generally ignore ads, and GM recently pulled their campaign due to poor performance.
Granted, this is a little different than a regular ad because the post will be showed to people who already “Like” your page, but anytime the word “Sponsored” is used, it has a promotional feel to it.
So I don’t know about you, but this announcement didn’t make me do any happy dances. 😉
Why Use It?
If you have a Facebook page, you’ve probably already noticed a limited percentage of your fans actually see your posts. In fact, Facebook admitted that brand page content is only viewed by 16% of your fans on average.
This is due to many reasons – users not logged in when you post, they get lost in the shuffle of other posts and pages people “Like”, etc.
And of course, the skeptic in me can’t help but wonder if they are now ensuring your posts are shown to a limited number of people to encourage more ad spend.
Let’s face it. At the end of the day, it’s about making money – anything to help their ailing stock, right?
According to FB, not only will this feature ensure more post visibility by giving it a sponsored label, but when your fans interact with the promoted post, it will be shown to their friends as well.
Is it Worth It?
Post promotion has its place, but I wouldn’t just haphazardly use it without a solid plan.
Say you’re having a huge promotion or contest for UK residents only. Since you can target the post, you may consider testing it out for something like this because you can reach more relevant people.
You also have to consider the fundamentals of marketing. More views is not necessarily better if you struggle with fan interaction and engagement to begin with. Just like pay-per-click marketing or any kind of paid advertising, your content needs to convert for the campaign to be successful.
So if your paid Facebook post gives you 50% more views, but your engagement (likes, comments or whatever you’re measuring) shows minimal results, technically that campaign was a failure.
So I wouldn’t throw any dollars into any advertising until you have a real plan in mind and understand that the basic rules of marketing and engagement still apply.
So tell me. Would you ever pay to promote your posts on Facebook? Have you tried it yet? What are your thoughts about this in general? I’d love to hear from those who’ve tried it.
Didn’t really work for my business. Facebook, in general, is a great platform for up and coming small bussnesses but is flawed.
I have tried & for me it was waste of time and money. No traffic, or new likes 🙁
Yeah I can’t imagine paying for that service after all their algorithm changes.
Great post I recently opened up a fanpage and got pulled into buying fb likes. The biggest mistake I could have made. Its very heard now a days to promote a page without spending money. All fake non active account so its like talking to a wall. Im not not paying fb any more my page will just get deleted or collect dust. People dont want to like a page with little to no likes.
Hey Lisa, I never tried the promote your post feature on Facebook but I have and that are marketers who swear by it. I personally rather spend my ad budget else where.
Hi Lisa great post. I just recently used the post promotion tool and so now just waiting for the results, but just like you I’m not really happy about paying for a service which one felt was already implied. Anyway, we’ve done ad promotion once b4 on FB in the past & got about 200+ clicks but no conversions to ROI. Spoke to the guys at FB (Barcelona) and they basically stated that the ad campaign we designed should basically drive people to stay on the FB environment and not take users directly to our website ie for best results plus also create competitions and engagement usually brings in the crown. Dreamdeel.com is the best in London, UK What else would u suggest to drive relevant traffic to our site – good post
ya share your article on blog page and share with minmum 5 friends and share with minmum 10 groups that groups contains more than 800 members you got traffic, like with boom.
My company recently bought ads on Facebook to promote our new artist/record. We did not get any sales from the ad itself. However we got about 15 likes per day on our FB page as promoted my Fabceook on their promote this post widget. My supervisor thought this wasn’t so bad, at least we are getting some exposure…but to our dismay most of the likes turned out to coming from fake accounts. I remember FB was cracking down on companies that bought likes..but it seems now Facebook is basically selling you fake likes and calling it promotion. Love to hear from other ppl who had similar experience. Thanks
I like the idea of fb promotion if it meant to reach wider audience. But I don’t like fb putting the word “sponsored” like we are begging fans to like it. I have tried it once only.
So I actually have used the “promote this post.” I wrote a post on my blog that actually was written for the person that doesn’t read my blog. It actually worked out quite well bc I got a few like to my professional page from it, it started some conversations and interest from people who had never considered it- so I had some unexpected traffic to my blog, and since this was my personal page and it has a decent number of people on it- I know that a lot have hidden my content for any reason-but nonetheless- this put the content in their feed regardless of the hidden factor. I can tell this because it did bring up interactions even after that from people I hadn’t heard from or that I even forgot about.
So for my seven measly bucks I feel like it was an OK- return. It actually did exactly what I wanted and let’s face it- a latte or a post push, my money is on the post push. I will probably do it again with another like article targeted to the person that isn’t a subscriber or reader.
Sorry about the lengthy reply, hopefully it might help some one.
I have tried and for me it was waste of time and money. probably you really need a solid plan.
Hello this is kinda of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors
or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding skills so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
… thanks for the very informative post, would it be possible to get some advises on pushing a video page like http://www.facebook.com/dohdx … any help would be appreciated 🙂
This post is excellent for new user like me. I hope it will help me to increase like on my fb fan page…
I was using …. http://www.likeandhits.com ….. to increase like on my facebook,twitter, google+ etc. page…..Is this a good Idea to use this site to increase like….
I having trouble with my facebook for 2 weeks. I got promote too. I was like no way that is not what we want pay for it. I have my aunt do this for me and she did closed up and remove it off my facebook. I can’t use my facebook and it wont let me use comment, likes, share, tag and inbox at all. I can’t add more friends. It is so crazy about it. I just realize facebook sure changed alot lately this last 2 weeks. I got so frustate. There is no way not going pay $7.00 for promote. I am just sayin it is SUCKS!
Yes. I’ve been promoting occasionally but usually don’t get much exposure/likes. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Recently, however, I had a huge response, only to find out they were 99% foreign. I thinxk they may have been made up! I’ve complained to Facebook but no response.
I continually find that any promotion of a post results in 90%+ foreign likes from “people” who all seem to have nothing on their own pages and only a few friends. Definitely a scam.
I have clients that have used the “promote your post” feature on Facebook and I have tried this myself on other clients pages, all with horrible results. Facebook DID NOT promote the post to fans of the page or to fans + their friends, but advertised the post to international Facebook “users” to “Like” the post and become fans of the page. All from foreign languages who we can not even service. We won’t be using this again until the bugs are worked out. HAS ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCED THIS? We’d like to know, thanks!
Another great article from you Lisa. I’ve thought about doing FB ads but also find it to be weird. Also the cost per click is higher than what google gives per click. I think that is one of the reasons people are not using it.
I just tried this…. Good response.
The last few times I promoted, the views did not go up, in fact I was not even charge for two days so I cancelled it. I’m going to check on the countries that I’m being promoted- that should be interesting!
A lot of my sales come from facebook but lately the sales have been going down. I’ve noticed that less people are seeing my posts. I tried the ads and don’t find them effectives at all. I decide to give the promote your post a try, I probably got 1000-1500 more views however I went a little farther and checked were the post was being promoted and found out to my surprise that they were promoting it in countries that I have never heard of. The list of countries was about 15 countries! I tried to delete all the countries and leave only USA and it wouldn’t allow me. Needles to say I will not be paying to promote another post unless I’m able to revise at least the country!
I’ve noticed that fewer people are seeing mine too. They must really be pushing to try to get more people to use that feature. It doesn’t make me want to use it at all… if anything it makes me more leery of it.
I am at a complete loss here…I have a facebook business page, I have over 9,000 fans and in the last 3 weeks, my page is like a ghost town. I post and post and post and still, nothing. I run sales that last 1 day only, if I pay to promote, they will promote it for 3 days, too long..and my total reach in my insights has plummeted…It went from a consistent 67,000 to 19,000 and remains steady there..so what happened???
From what I’ve been seeing on the “Promote” link – it claims the ad will appear not only on the newsfeed of the people who like the page, but will also appear to the friends of those people… that’s a lot! I was presented with an estimated reach of 4K users (currently a little >1K like the page)… that was yesterday.. today I can’t even find the link! Did FB dissolve this feature already?
Facebook is not so good for branding. It is not easy to get good revenue from there. I have also some products on Facebook and I don’t think it is helpful for me.
Hi Lisa
I have just run a promoted post on my FB page and what annoys me is that I do not need a lot of hit in Arabian countries. I got a huge hits as they promised, but in a market I do not need :-/
Hi Lisa,
I have reading your blog for almost two years now. This is my first comment on your blog. you have inspired me to start my own website and not only that, but i have found many useful and uncommon advice on your blog as well, so thanks for sharing and for everything 😀
Hey Ali
Yaaaay! Glad you’ve decided to jump in! Enjoy the ride. Come by websitebabble.com and chat with us if you have questions!
I can honestly see Facebook turning into the new Myspace. In fact, there was a news story yesterday about Mark Zuckerberg’s co-founder friend offloading his shares for a few million dollars. This isn’t good, and together with the prospect of inline style ads and other clumsy monetisation is almost certainly indicative of what is to come.
But I would just like to add, in Facebook’s defense, brands such as General Motors probably will not see high click-throughs or conversions on their ads. I mean, who on Facebook is likely to buy a car? Signing up for a paid game or downloading digital content is fine, but a motor vehicle? Unlikely.
Also, only 16% of fans see a post. More like 20%. Call it a fifth. That’s not so bad really, considering only about 33% of people who click my Facebook ads go onto click “Like” which arguably for most advertisers is the end goal. I still believe Facebook ads offer better value than Adwords. In your Adwords video you talk about the shock of seeing your budget used up so quickly the first time you tried their ads.
I regard Facebook as customer retention/customer service but on a shoestring budget. I would rather keep a loyal tribe of those who are acutely interested in what I have to say (and sometimes sell) at a negligible cost, then spend huge bucks trying to push more products (or posts) under their nose. It’s offensive.
They say “a camel is a horse designed by committee” and it’s happening already with Facebook. I sincerely hope my end of the pool doesn’t get p*ssed in!
Over to you, Google Plus…
Hi Lisa,
Facebook’s “Promote Your Post” Feature – Boom or Bust? This phrase it self is enough to think that face book user’s may not be that much happy or dance.Normally users use Like if it touches their heart or they like the content there.
Once The word “Sponsored” appears on the page the people like the content .Then they may fill that it is not regular Ad but it has a promotional feel to it.
the best way is have a fan page bild some fans and spend your addd money to your fans give them gifts ask them to put your logo in there profile picture make them to get more likes and who ever get more like s to there profile picture you give them a worthy gift, this way you can promote your brand and your products, this is the only option which will work fast and it is something fun to your fans,
I also think that now that we are paying for the facebook “service” we should also get a link or contact information for Customer Service. That’s what most businesses do! Good luck getting a hold of ANYONE at Facebook!