For a couple of years I was working as both a teacher and social media manager for my school. Our main form of outreach was Facebook and it was highly effective. Most of our new students came via Facebook, we used it to distribute useful material and keep students in the know of our latest developments.
However, during my time there we noticed an almost over night change. When we started out, we just needed to make good quality content that attracted people to share it and with little effort we’d reach between 300-1000 people (out of our 1400 contacts), but then overnight we saw a shift where we’d be lucky if 100 people saw the post we had shared.
The content was the same quality, it appealed to our students, but Facebook had changed the system to encourage more people to pay for their new promoted posts. We adapted and worked out how to use Facebook’s likes and promoted posts fairly effectively, but after some recent discussions regarding “buying followers,” I realised there is a lot of confusion surrounding Facebook ads, paid promotion, and its effectiveness.
Today I’m going to help clarify that confusion and explain what is effective as well as the rights and wrongs of Facebook ads.
The Two Types of Facebook Paid Content
There are two forms of paid Facebook ads for users. These have different cons and benefits (although as you will see, one is defintiely better than another). These started in 2012, but really became important in 2013 when Facebook changed it’s news feed settings to push people to pay and insure Facebook was financially viable. It’s easy to complain about Facebook hindering pages from reaching their followers (I certainly have), but it is what it is and it isn’t going to change. You can either play their game, or refuse to. If your church or ministry is on Facebook, it is important to know how it works, so you can more effectively reach people. The alternative is to go elsewhere. You decide.
Buying Likes from Facebook (or Promote page)
The first form of paid promotion is a “promoted page.” This is a classic Facebook ad in a new form. You create a description of your page, add a nice image, set a budget, and you can choose the “audience” you want to target.
So let’s say you are a church based in a small town in America. Maybe your congrigation is mostly young professionals with families. You can create an advert that will only be shown to Christians, in your town, with children and include a picture of families at your church. Or maybe you have an active student ministry as well. In this case you could run a separate ad that is targeted more towards students and focuses on the student side of your ministry.
If you set up your audience well, then this can be a very effective tool but you need to be careful.
The Problem with Facebook Promote Page
Facebook has a huge problem with fake followers. There are sites on the Internet where you can pay to gain X number of “followers” for your page. The idea being that these “followers” will act as “social proof” for your page. What that means is people will think “look, 1000 people follow this page, that means it must be pretty good if 1000 people are following it!” It’s true and to some degree it works, after all, who are you more likely to follow, a page with 10 followers or one with 1000?
Although Facebook has cracked down a bit on Fake followers, they haven’t completely because fake followers actual assist Facebook in a strange symbiotic relationship. Many users scroll past promoted page Facebook ads because they are obviously ads and we don’t like adverts (at least, not obvious ones). However, fake accounts need to like lots of random things so that they don’t set off Facebooks suspicious account activity detectors (If person X likes a lot of different things then it’s impossible to say which page paid for their like, if a page did. So you can’t penalise that page). This benefits Facebook because people will click on promote page adverts and so justify Facebook taking your hard earned cash.
In theory, it is possible to get round this by being very selective in your target audience with geographical information as well as specific interests. However, in all the pages I have experimented with running these promoted page adverts I had to remove the majority of the followers I bought as I discovered they were fake. I’m not saying that you won’t be able to effectively target individuals to insure that you gain real followers, but I haven’t effectively managed to do this yet.
The Problem with Fake Followers
In case you are wondering what on earth could be so bad about getting fake followers, then I want to point out the two main issues with fake followers.
The first is the ethics of the whole venture. Imagine someone following your page only to discover that the other followers are fake? How do you think they will feel? I’m willing to bet that they will feel dupped or decieved because that is exactly what you have done. You have given a false impression of being followed by others when the truth is that you aren’t. As the apostle Paul said:
But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. – 2 Corinthians 4:2
If you believe that people will never find out they have been lied to (not an excuse for lying but I’m going along with it for a moment) then you’re plain wrong. People are smart and when they see a page with many followers but only a couple of people liking each post, it isn’t hard to work out that the followers are fake. I’m sure this will be enough of a dissuasion for most people but just incase it isn’t I want to point out how utterly worthless these fake followers are.
The second issue is that these “followers” actually harm your page in the long run. Facebook now opperates by showing content to a limited group of your followers. If they interact with that content (likes, comments or clicks on links) then Facebook knows it is good quality and shares it with more people. That way we all see better content in our newsfeeds (quite clever really). So if you have 50 followers and they are all real people, Facebook will show your post to a sample of that group. Say 8 people, if they interact, Facebook will show it to another 5, and if they continue to interact Facebook will show it to more of your followers and even friends of your followers.
However, if you have 150 followers, 50 of whom are real and 100 are fake, then you are harming yourself. Facebook will again show your post to 8 people to start with, but maybe only 1 of these people is actually a real person and so you need them to interact with that post to ensure that it continues to spread. Even then it may only reach more fake followers and never ever get off the ground.
What About Buying Followers from Other Groups or Sites?
It is possible to buy fake followers from other sites at better rates, but not only do you have the preexisting issues surrounding fake followers that I mentioned above, but you also gain other issues. In this case, you are guaranteed that these accounts will be fake accounts whereas promoted pages can and sometimes do reach real people, and furthermore, buying followers from other services is against the terms and conditions of Facebook (and other services) and can result in your page being deleted.
Promoted Posts
Although the picture doesn’t look good for promoted pages, my experience of using promote post has been much more successful and so I fully recommend checking out promoted posts. This is practically a necessity for page managers on Facebook now, due to the throttling of content from pages in newsfeeds, but also it is also a great way to reach new people.
Unlike promoted pages, a promoted posts is just what it sounds like, a way to promote a specific post. Let’s say that you have an upcoming special service at the church. Instead of relying on your followers to press like, comment on a link to make sure that more people see that content, you can pay a fee and insure that Facebook shares it with more people. Like regular posts, the more people interact with that promoted post ensures you get a better return for your cash. So if you spend $5 and people don’t interact at all, it will only be promoted to a small group. But if you pay $5 and lots of people interact, it will reach many more people. Some practical examples. My school spent $5 and managed to reach 334 people, 300 of whom were paid for, not bad but not great. We also spent $5 and managed to reach over 2000 (around 1000 of whom were paid for) because it was more attractive to share.
You can promote posts to your followers, your followers and their friends, or to a select audience (like promoted pages). Each has it’s own advantage. For example, a church announcement might be best to share with just your followers, an invitation to a church outreach event might be best for followers and their friends, and a specific attempt to get new congregation members or for a specific subset of your congregation might be best for a target audience.
You might suspect that promoting a post to a specific audience comes into the same issues as promoting a page to a specific audience. My experience doesn’t reflect this (but I can say the same will always be true for you). My experience has show that promoting a post manages to attract more attention and interaction from real people as they don’t see it as an obvious ad. After all, you can offer them some useful advice, content or promotion unlike just a statement about who you are in Facebook ads. Yes, fake followers may still interact so you have to monitor who interacts with your promoted posts if you send it to a specific audience and I would advise you to remove those fake followers, they just make it harder to get real people to see your content, but it is much rarer in my experience.
How to Get the Most from Promoted Posts
The following tips are based on my expierence with Facebook and I’m not saying that these will universally work for you. I’m also not saying these are the only tips you need to know, just that these have worked for me and are worth trying.
Make Interactable Content
Obvious Facebook ads attract very few real people. If you just see “(company name) description of company” and an image then it’s easy to overlook it as it’s clearly an ad, and you’re on social networks for social interactions not. Furthermore, the more people interact with your promote post, the more it get’s shared (Facebook LOVES good content and will want to share it more). Interactions come in three forms
- Likes
- Comments
- Clicks on links
The secret to creating interaction worthy content is a whole post in itself and it will depend on who you want to reach but there are some good tips.
- Don’t make it about you
- Ask people to interact (comment/share/like)
- Leave information gaps (people love to show how much they know)
- Serve people (giveaways and helpful tools)
- Short and quick
Build Up to Your Promoted Post or Call to Action
Your pages history will reflect on how well Facebook shares your post. If your last 5 posts were interacted with a lot, then you 6th will be shared with a larger proportion of your community right off the back. If you then promote it, you’ll ensure that you reach an even wider group than before.
Furthermore, the more people interact with your page, the more they will be shown things from you.
Some content that can be great for interactions include quote graphics (with bible verses), questions (using noteography so they were an image), infographics and other short content.
At my place of work we, would build up all week to our big call to action. Four days out of five were short images, infographics and similar and then the last one would be our call to action. We made sure it was still interaction worthy. Sometimes we’d promote our really successful lead up posts as well to insure we boosted our reach too.
Remove Fake Followers
Fake followers just hurt your ability to reach people, they will never interact with any of your content once they’ve liked your page. Go through and look at your followers who seem suspicious (especially if they have liked a freakishly high number of pages) and remove them from your page.
Target Your Audience Well
When you promote your page, use the filters to target the right people. This will depend on your factors, but you can either go for your fans, your fans and their friends, or a specific demographic you define. We usually went for fans and friends, if someone was a fan, they we’re more likely to interact, then their friends would see it on their timeline because they interacted and this may lead to them discussing our page and leading to an interaction with us. We also made sure to offer great customer service, so that our fans would recommend us to someone else.
Conclusion
Facebook ads can be a bit confusing and certainly it can feel annoying now that your page is intentionally hindered in reaching your audience and fans. However, Facebook has to make money and still focuses on promoting good content and not bad content. If you know how to use the system to your advantage, you will get a lot more out of it.
As I’ve been careful to point out, this has been my experience. While many of these tips will be true for everyone, I don’t promise they will all work nor that they are the only tips you need to know. If you have some experience with Facebook ads I’d love you to chime in below.
What tips do you have for using Facebook Ads?
[Keyboard money image via zacharmstrong via Compfight cc, via erix!, Mannequinsvia Compfight cc, LEGO rocketship image via caperberry.tj via Compfight cc and the Target image via JeepersMedia via Compfight cc]
Simon L Smith says
“What tips do you have for using Facebook Ads?”
First, thank you. I experimented with Facebook ads for the first time last week. This is good – and timely for me – info!
The short answer:
My experience (selling an ebook to teachers and youth pastors) would suggest that you focus on employment/position, and not interested.
The longer story:
I ran two ads, both to drive traffic to a sales site for an ebook to help Youth Pastors, Teachers, and Parents use Terminator Genisys to share God’s story: http://gumroad.com/l/genisys
The first focused on very specific interests and, in my opinion, ended up being a failure. The audience was WAY to broad for a bible study. I got comments such as “wtf is this?” and “what?” and “Why am I seeing this, I am an atheist!” (Good stuff.)
The second focused on employment/position; lots of variations of youth pastor, minister, etc.
I got more clicks with the first (a lot more, like 1000s more).
The second got me less clicks, but better eyes looking at my stuff.
Simon L Smith
http://www.reelparables.com
Chris Wilson says
That’s a great insight Simon,
I’d guess what was different in my case is that we were looking more geographically bound at first and then we aimed more for word of mouth spread (friends of customers) where as your book was less geographic specific.
It’s a shame you can’t stack interests (i.e. both interested in Terminator AND Christianity) [Unless you can? As I said I’m no guru on Ads] but targeting profession makes a lot of sense.
Thanks for sharing.