Written by ContentPowered.com
Coming in at number two on the Alexa page rank, you can bet that the number of hits on Google Search are comparable to the number of hits that Facebook gets. Generally, visitors on Facebook have an average page view of 14.21 and a daily total time of up to 29 minutes on the site.
Comparing this with other similar sites that are struggling to get their roots deep into social networking, it’s easy to see why posting an ad on a site like Facebook would be much better than posting the same ad on a site with a poor page rank.
However, ads on Facebook are better suited with Facebook pages, and there is great need to control and regulate the way your ad is perceived and even collect data about your daily visitors so that you can improve on your ad strategies.
Creating a promoted post, on the other hand comes with a few challenges. One of the challenges is that Facebook recently changed the default settings on promoted posts. Now, they force the page owners to promote their own posts to both fans and even the friends of fans. Before, one had the option of choosing fans only.
What Is It’s Importance?
The potential disadvantage of promoting your posts to non-fans is greater than the potential advantage. By promoting your posts to non-fans, you risk a huge backlash and also a long-term damage to your page. The sentiment on your posts, as judged by the comments that you will find on your page, will be negative.
There will be a bunch of users that will be spamming your pages and letting out some snide comments. Moreover, most people won’t avoid hitting the “Report Spam” button just to express their views.
Consequently, your EdgeRank will take a nosedive, and this is based on the fact that Facebook made it quite clear that negative comments on your posts will reduce its EdgeRank. So, when fans mark your post as spam, it wouldn’t take long before you realize that you’re headed downwards.
True, none of that is fair, and especially to the owner of the post. However, if you look at it from a different perspective, you’ll realize that you are actually invading on the non-fans. They never asked to see your content and neither will they like your page for any matter.
Going about this issue isn’t difficult either. Below are the steps that will guide you to allowing Facebook fans that are from United States alone:
- Head over to the Ad Manager – You can do this by typing in the web address https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ where you’ll be greeted by a page that asks you to choose a Facebook destination or to enter a URL.
- Next, choose your page as the Facebook destination and then find out what you would like to promote the post on.
- Afterwards, select the promote page posts. Here, you will see that the “Get more Page Likes” is selected by default. However, you need to change this to become “Promote Page Posts” which gives you some slight flexibility.
- Next, you will need to choose the page post that you wish to promote. Here, you will be faced with two options. You can either choose to select an existing post on your page, or create an entirely new page host. After selecting it, you will notice a preview located in the right column preview.
- Though not compulsory, you can choose to deactivate and reactivate certain options in the sponsored stories settings. Some of the options that you can alter include:
- People sharing you page post
- People commenting on the page post
- People liking your page post
It would be wise to leave all these options unchecked by default. The reason for this is that showing some social proof on your ads makes them more effective, and the only way that this is achieved is if you allow people to share, comment, and like your posts.
6. Choose Your Audience – This is the part where you get to choose various things such as the location of your fans, their age, or even gender that you wish to target.
It would be a good idea to segment your ads using these different parameters as this allows you to measure and compare the response of different segments. Additionally, time is of importance too. If it’s past 1am in a certain location, there wouldn’t be sense in paying for the purpose of promoting a page there. There are three main parameters that define your audience, but for location, it can be subdivided into even smaller groups such as state/province, city, and ZIP code. While filling in this section, ensure that you check the radio button next to country and then type in “United States” next to the label written “Location”. You can afterwards choose an age bracket and a specific gender.
There are several other things that need to be put into consideration such as choosing your target fans based on their interests, narrowing down the connections, and finally naming the campaign and choosing a suitable budget. All that remains from this point is to simply place your order and wait for Facebook’s approval.
You should note that it is impossible to promote fans who only reside on your timeline, but it is possible to use the Ad manager to promote your posts and control the appearance of your posts.