Facebook Pages Just Got a Lot More Customizable
Back in 2006, creating a Facebook Page was mind-numbingly simple. You picked your URL, uploaded a picture, filled out a few boxes, and that was it. Unlike its chief rival, MySpace, there was no mucking about with HTML, no picking the right animated backgrounds, no blinking green fonts to fine-tune. Of course, the flipside of that simplicity was a complete lack of control. Your page was indistinguishable from every other. White background, Helvetica, blue buttons, a simple newsfeed-type layout. Facebook has slowly been adding options to the mix the past few years. You still can’t create a true rotating-skull-gif masterpiece like you could on MySpace, but you can make your page more useful to your audience. This week, Facebook began rolling out a new batch of settings for pages. These new options are aimed squarely at marketers; they’re all about converting traffic into action (and paying Facebook for more action whenever possible). Here’s how to optimize your shiny new Facebook Page. #1: Brush up Your Images It’s not all “brave new world of tomorrow;” most of the changes are far enough under the hood that your casual traffic won’t notice them. Your trusty profile and cover photos are still the first thing people see: So now is a good time to give both images a once-over. Are they visually compelling? Are they the right size and resolution? Make sure you’re putting your best face forward. Your profile picture should be square, 170×170 pixels. The cover photo should be 851×315 pixels. Use a JPG for the cover photo if it has lots of color depth. For photos with large flat areas of color or lots of text, use PNG instead. If your images look good and your CTA button is ready to for action, you can start organizing your page. #2: Choose a Template First, head to the “Settings” button at the top of your screen. Then select “Edit Page”: Here’s where you can drill down into how your page looks to your potential audience. Start by having a look at the types of templates available. If you’re in a few very specific industries, Facebook has you covered for a preset look: • Shopping is for ecommerce sites. It highlights your products and encourages people to buy • Venues puts the focus on your upcoming events, hours, and location • Gaming highlights your fans, with a tab for Groups where fans can connect. • Politician encourages people to send messages, and features photos and videos your page shares • Professional Services has a “Call Now” CTA and puts your Services tab up at the top of the list • Restaurants & Cafés is designed to highlight your hours of operation, location and menu Each of these templates automatically rearranges your tabs and buttons. Before you choose one, take a look at the details to see which tabs are featured—if you pick a template that’s missing some of your current tabs, those tabs will disappear. In the incredibly likely event that your industry doesn’t fit neatly into one of these six templates, you can… #3: Rearrange Your Tabs (And Your Feed) Your page has a row of tabs on the left side that people can click to go straight to specific types of content. This is where you can make a huge difference in how your page looks and feels. In the new layout, the order of your tabs top to bottom determines the order content is displayed on your page. In other words: If you put the Photos tab at the top of the list, your latest pics will show right under your profile picture. If you put Events up top, visitors will see the event and your “Buy Tickets” CTA button first. You don’t have to pin one post and hope for the best! You can show viewers exactly what you want them to see! O, frabjous day. Put your most relevant content types at the top, and turn off tabs you don’t need: Make sure your most visible content will lead to the action that’s most valuable to your goals. If you’re raising awareness, photos or videos might be the top. If you’re keeping your audience up to date on news, keep your posts up top, etc. Note that Facebook will sometimes add a “Featured for You” box at the top of the feed for individual visitors, with content its almighty algorithms determined will be of most interest. #4: Take Advantage of the New Posting Templates The final change you will notice is a row of colorful boxes underneath your usual “Write something” post prompt: This is Facebook’s less-than-subtle way of clueing us into new post templates(and, of course, subtly encouraging specific types of posts). Each icon leads to a custom form you can fill out to quickly create ads, invite discussion, create events, and more. If none of the templates is appealing, just click in the “Write something” box to write a plain ol’ post, just like grandpa and grandma used to write. #5: See the Final Results Once you’re done customizing and adding new content, take a look at what your page looks like to visitors. Your view is full of buttons, tips and tools to help you funnel advertising cash to Facebook. If you log out completely, you can look at the page as a visitor—but the bottom half of the screen will have a big “Sign Up or Log In” banner. It can take some clicking around to find the “View as Visitor” option—it’s hiding in the “More” button just below your profile picture: Take a minute to look around and make sure your page is looking its best. Give Your Facebook a Facelift Even with these changes, Facebook Pages will never be confused with a properly-optimized, well-designed landing page. Still, you can exercise a lot more control now over how your audience encounters and interacts with your page. So brush up your images, get your tabs in order—and most importantly, keep serving up
The most important thing to know about Facebook’s ad load problem
For almost a year, Facebook has warned that sometime in the middle of 2017 the social network will max out the number of ads it can squeeze in people’s news feeds. As a result of hitting that ad load ceiling, Facebook’s ad revenue growth will slow down “meaningfully” in the second half of 2017, said CFO David Wehner during the company’s Q1 2017 earnings call on Wednesday. But there’s a but. When Wehner talks about ad load, he is only referring to the ad load in Facebook’s news feed, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed after Wednesday’s earnings call that was once again dominated by ad load questions. That distinction is important because it means that Facebook’s ad load problem may not be much of a problem for long. Facebook may be running out of room for ads in people’s news feeds, but it’s starting to put ads in so many other places that ad load on Facebook may be stagnating, but ad load across Facebook Inc. is just beginning to ramp up. For example, the number of ad impressions that Facebook served in Q1 only increased by 32 percent year-over-year. That’s a slowdown compared to the four preceding quarters when the number was up by either 49 or 50 percent year-over-year. The reason for the deceleration? “Our decision to rank longer-form video higher in news feed,” said Wehner. “That means more time in video and that does come at the expense of some impression growth in news feed.” That’s weird, right? Facebook is pushing people to do something that makes Facebook lose out on money. Except that Facebook is betting eventually it will make back that money and then some. It is conditioning people to watch longer videos on Facebook. And it just so happens that those longer videos are the ones that Facebook is starting to insert mid-roll ads, or “ad breaks,” within. Those ad breaks could wind up fetching more money per ad for Facebook than the news feed ads currently going unseen, which might mean that Facebook could eventually even reduce the number of standard news feed ads to avoid feeling like Fox-era MySpace. Ad breaks are only the latest example of what Facebook has been doing for years to reduce the pressure to up the ratio of ads to organic posts in people’s feeds in order to up its ad revenue. A few years ago it started diverting ads out to other publishers’ properties through its Audience Network ad network. Then it started sending them to Instagram. Then to Facebook Groups. Instagram Stories, Messenger not included At the same time as Facebook has ramped up ways to redirect ads from the news feed, it is also rolling out new ad slots, like within Instagram’s Stories feed that’s used by more than 200 million people every day. Ads in Instagram Stories “are not in the ad load calculation, per se. It is different from the ad load commentary that I’ve given,” Wehner said on Wednesday. Also not included in the ad load calculation: ads within Facebook Messenger. Like ads in Facebook’s videos and Instagram’s Stories, Messenger has only started seeding ads in people’s inboxes. But it’s spent the past couple years conditioning people to become accustomed to hearing from marketers on Messenger. In 2015 Facebook redesigned Pages on mobile to make it easier for people to connect with a business through Messenger. Then in 2016 it opened Messenger to bots so that businesses could automate their conversations with customers. And in 2017 it is making it easier for the 1.2 billion people that use Messenger every month to find businesses within Messenger. “The top priority right now is just building up the base of organic interactions between people and businesses that they want to interact with. And once we get that to a big base, I think there are going to be a lot of opportunities to build a business,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday’s call. Something similar could be said for other new Facebook products. The company wants people to use Facebook’s and Messenger’s new in-app camera, so it’s added Camera Effects like illustrations and animated masks that people can apply to their photos. And if people use them, Facebook could start pitching advertisers on buying branded ones like the kind Snapchat sells. Facebook may be hitting a point where soon it can’t squeeze much more milk from its news feed cash cow. But it’s raising so many calves that it may not matter in the long run.
10 easy steps to help your business flourish on Facebook
Whether your business is new to Facebook marketing or just in need of a refresh, columnist Will Scott’s Facebook tips will help you build a vibrant and engaged Facebook presence. If your business isn’t making itself visible on Facebook, then you’re missing out on one of the most cost-effective places to meet new customers. Everyone is aware of the popularity of Facebook, but not as many people appreciate the opportunities available to businesses that develop a social media presence. With social media, you have unprecedented control over your brand image, and you can put your message in front of the users who are most likely to be interested. Use these simple tips to take advantage of the internet’s most popular social media platform. 1. Flesh out your Facebook page Even if you already have an engaging and user-friendly website, take some time to completely fill out a Facebook page for your business. Include pictures of your storefront and staff, to make your business trustworthy and relatable. Your Facebook presence gives you a foot in the door with social media users who are looking to learn more without leaving their social media app. Be sure to include contact information, hours of operation and a link to your website. 2. Schedule frequent and consistent posts Once you have pictures and information about your business, an active page should also have relatively frequent posts. Try to post original content at least once a week, but prioritize quality over quantity. Posting several times a day might annoy your fans, causing them to unlike or unfollow your page. When you post blog updates or other business announcements, Facebook posts allow you to amplify that message to a wider audience. Direct social media users to visit your blog or special offers page. 3. Learn about your customers Once your page has attracted some attention, the Audience Insight tools gather quantitative information about the people who like and visit your page. Learn more about their demographics, and use that information to reach out to new groups. If your page is attracting more middle-aged women than expected, for example, then you may want to include posts that are particularly relevant for those potential customers. You can also make a point of reaching out to customers in other age groups to explore untapped markets. 4. Pay attention to — and encourage — reactions and comments Pay attention to the posts that get reactions and comments. Comments generally indicate a higher level of engagement because it takes more time to type a response than to simply hit “Like,” though the variety of new reactions provide more information than the older “likes.” Depending on your target audience, you may want to elicit a wide range of reactions to make your brand more relatable. Be careful about responding to negative comments, but invite dissatisfied customers to call or email directly. When your business does engage, interaction should be succinct and professional. 5. Post content that gets shared Even for a business page, social media can feel like a popularity contest. When more users share your post, your message goes a lot farther, hopefully generating leads for your business. Of course, not all popular content will be appropriate for your brand. Be especially careful of posts and links that could have political implications or alienate potential customers. It’s best to avoid controversial subject matter and stick to your area of expertise. 6. Stay engaged If your business replies quickly to messages on Facebook, then others will be able to see that your page is active and responsive. Make sure your posts are relevant to your target audience in order to get a response, and try to focus on things that readers will genuinely find useful or newsworthy. Present yourself as a resource for timely and interesting industry news. Consider engaging with your employees through their social media pages, too. 7. Connect with the community Stay relevant by posting information about local festivals and other regional news. If your business is connected with charitable organizations, then social media gives you an opportunity to highlight that connection. Post photos of your employees when they volunteer with local non-profits, and show the community how your brand has a positive impact. As a bonus, when you have an active Facebook page, other businesses and profiles can link their posts and thank-you announcements to your page. 8. Post and share events Create Facebook events for your next big sale. When events are happening in the community, you can draw attention to those as well. Many businesses fail to leverage events as opportunities to promote their social media page. Given the number of people on Facebook, creating an event page can also increase the turnout for your real-world event. Facebook events make it easy for users to invite friends and see how many people plan to attend. 9. Pay for advertising Once you collect a few hundred fans on Facebook, you’ll notice that your posts don’t seem to get as many views as they should. Your posts don’t necessarily get 50 times more exposure when your page has 50 times more followers. This gives new pages and startups an advantage when they first develop a following, but larger business can still have a big impact on Facebook. Paying for advertising allows you to target people with interests relevant to your industry. You can also target specific demographics and areas to maximize your advertising dollar. 10. Build social media into your SEO budget Like updating your website for search engine optimization, social media is a long-term project for your business. You may not have anyone experienced or qualified to manage your social media presence, and few businesses can afford to hire a new employee for this highly specialized job. Many managers have a hard enough time keeping employees off of their personal Facebook pages. Creating engaging content takes time, and the simplest option is often bundling social media maintenance with other SEO services. Final thoughts Maintaining an online presence
