Currently one of the best ways to virally promote your business is promote posts. Promoting posts makes the post show up more times in your friends and friends of friends news streams.
Increased Viral Effect: The promotion causes more interaction and increases virality of the post. The initial boost helps kick-start the viral ball - the more people who interact through Likes and Comments the more people see the post.
Genuine Likes: The new Likes on your page are from your target audience (as they are the friends of those who already Like your page) hence they are more likely to interact in future on your page and do business with you.
However Facebook doesn’t allow pages that have less than 400 Likes to promote posts, also promotion has to start within about 3 days after posting. So then how can you use ads to get more Likes and post promotion? One option is Sponsored Stories that Facebook offers along side regular ads.
What are Sponsored Stories?
Here’s how Facebook describes it –
“A sponsored story is different from an ad because it’s a story you can already see about activity from people you’re connected to, Pages you like or apps you use. A business pays to sponsor these regular stories to increase the chances that you’ll notice it.“
“Sponsored stories are messages coming from friends about them engaging with your Page, app or event that a business, organization or individual has paid to highlight so there’s a better chance people see them.
People are influenced by what their friends like and connect to. When someone interacts with your Page, app, or event it creates a story that their friends may see in the news feed. You can pay to sponsor these stories so more people will see it when their friends have engaged with you on Facebook.
For example, if someone likes your Page they’re saying they’re interested in being connected to you and it can be interpreted as an endorsement of your brand or service. People may see when their friends like your Page, but because there’s a lot of activity in news feed, they may miss it. When you create sponsored stories, you’re increasing the number of people who will learn about you through the actions of their friends.”
That means it works quite like post promotion or at least can be used until you cross that magic number of 400.
What Do Sponsored Stories Do?
Now unlike promoted posts that makes the post show higher in news streams of friends and friends of friends. Sponsored Stories shows activities in the news feed. You can choose what activities should be shown to friends of friends.
E.g. If Ravi ‘Likes’ your page, his friends will see this activity higher up in their news feeds or in the right side column.
I personally prefer sponsored stories to regular ads because
- The stories are genuine social proof of people interacting with your page
- You are targeting the right market by reaching out to friends of friends
Sponsored Stories get created when someone
- Likes your Page
- Likes or comments on your Page’s post
- RSVPs to your Page’s event
- Votes on your Page’s question
- Checks in to your place
- Uses an app or plays your game
- Likes or shares your website
How to Set-up a Sponsored Story?
Facebook seems to be showing different people different types of ad creation screens. If you are not seeing the same screen as below, Click Here to see instructions for the second set of screens.
- Got to https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/
- Choose your page, app or event.
- Click on the option to promote a specific post.
- Choose the post to be promoted.
- Select the option for people to see stories about their friends.
- Choose you audience based on country, city, age, gender, interests and connections (select the ‘not connected’ option).
- Make sure your page shows in the Friends of Connections field.
- In the Objective section select people who are most likely to click on my ad or sponsored story.
- Ad your account details, campaign name, campaign budget per day or lifetime.
- Review your ad.
- Place the order.
You can monitor and manage you ad from the Ads Manager option in the left column of your Facebook Home page.
Note: Due to Facebook’s Privacy Settings only the friends of the people who are already sharing their activity ‘on your page’ with their friends on Facebook can see Sponsored Stories about you.
More about Sponsored Stories - https://www.facebook.com/help?page=154500071282557
More about Promoted Posts - https://www.facebook.com/help/promote
[...] making the post on Sponsored Stories yesterday I realized Facebook has two different types of ad screens they show users. I seem to be on the old [...]
ReplyDelete