How to Get the Most out of Facebook Advertising

As an agency we’re responsible for a number of our clients’ social media accounts and as such we need to stay up-to-date with the latest algorithms, preferences and tools that come with each social media platform. We like to share our findings on our blog too for those that are taking on the task of their brand’s social media by themselves. To date, most of our blog posts have been on exactly that; algorithms, preferences and tools – not this one.

We’ve known for a while that Facebook was moving to favour organic, social engagement and that the days of businesses being able to reach a large audience without payment were numbered. Various gurus we spoke to had slightly different ideas on this and how it would pan out, but the inevitable has happened; businesses have to spend on advertising to reach their audience.

We’re trying not to be down about this, instead we’re thinking of it the other way around – weren’t we lucky to have got so much free reach for so long! So now we’re not just sharing top tips on how to make your organic posts work best for you, we’re also including how to make your Facebook advertising work best for you. Below are our best tips and nuggets of wisdom from a mix of experts, gurus, webinars and our own journey of discovery…

Promotional Posts Don’t Work

Any organic posts that use promotional style language such as ‘competition’, ‘buy now’, ‘click here’ will get flagged by the powers that be at Facebook and not shared

No-One’s There

Less than 1% of people that have liked your business page will see your posts come up in their newsfeeds organically

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Engagement Expectations

The highest level of organic engagement you can expect with your business page is 5%

Videos

All videos should be longer than 90 seconds as Facebook now favours longer videos, the same applies to Facebook live videos

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Organic Posts

Organic Posts need to be authentic and feature timely, topical or local events, those that engage with the Facebook community in the most ‘real’ way will be rewarded with reach

Don’t Use a Scheduler

Schedule posts through Facebook directly rather than a third-party management tool, Facebook is a control freak, and anything done outside of it’s high blue facey walls will be frowned upon and not given as much reach

No External Links

Don’t include external links on your posts as Facebook wants to keep you on Facebook and never let you go (see above)

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Caring’s Sharing

Create shareable content that makes the sharer look good – this sounds odd but makes sense when you think about it, people share stuff that makes them look cool/funny/clever/sexy/kind etc – so if your content ticks any of those boxes then people are more likely to share your posts

Don’t boost posts!

Create a Facebook advert instead as boosted posts are less targeted and therefore less effective

Check you out

A huge 62% of people use Facebook to check out a business before purchasing, so next time someone says ‘Facebook’s not important for my business’ you are totally entitled to quote this smugly, oh so smugly