Get ready for another improvement, this time from Facebook Events!
As part of this update you’ll see changes on News Feed ads for Events, the addition of Event insights and improving the look and feel of Event pages.

All of these updates aim to boost awareness of Facebook Events and response rates of every event created.

Facebook explained the rationale behind the improvements on their news blog:

“Every month, 400 million people around the world use events on Facebook to discover and connect with everything from parties with friends to things happening in their communities. And nearly 30 percent of all the events people connect to – like concerts, community events and special nights at bars and restaurants – are created by pages.”

“IN THE COMING WEEKS”

Page admins will be able to create right-side panel ads for Events on behalf of their businesses. This can be done via the ads create tool in Ads Manager, as well as the Power Editor.

Here’s a sneak peak of how the new event ad will look:

A CLOSER LOOK AT YOUR EVENTS

Also, hosts can now see metrics on how their Event posts are performing. Admins can view metrics in the right-hand column of an Event page. Insights will show:

• The number of people who’ve seen a link to the event on Facebook
• The number of people who’ve viewed the event
• The number of people who have engaged with the post (clicked, liked or joined)

Facebook describes these changes in a blog post:

“To make it easier for businesses to reach even more people for their events, we’re announcing new features that help Pages promote their events and see how they’re performing.

In the coming weeks, Pages will be able to create ads for desktop and mobile News Feed that boost awareness of events and drive responses. Previously, these types of ads were only shown in the right-hand column on desktop.”

Plus, all you need to do is click Boost Event to make your event an ad! It’s super simple and an easy way to get more eyeballs viewing your event.

HOW TO HIGHLIGHT YOUR EVENTS

You can also customize your Page tabs to further increase your fans’ awareness of Events in a single view. To do this, simply click the “More” menu on your page and reorder the tabs so Events is one of the first to appear.

People using Mobile can simply scroll through the Upcoming Events of their Facebook account to check what’s happening around town in the coming weeks.

Lastly, Facebook has improved the look and feel of each of the users’ Events page. Users can now see upcoming events, the ones they are hosting, as well as their saved events, just in case you want to follow an event without attending. This area now also includes a list of suggested events based on the pages you’ve liked, location and the day of the week.

What do you think of Facebook’s new updates? Have you seen them yet?

Are you using Facebook Events in a creative way?
Share in the comments below!

The New Facebook Ads Campaign Structure is set to roll out on September 15 and will be made available to 100% of advertisers in the next few weeks.

This change is designed to make advertising efforts easier for advertisers in three words:

• Organize
• Optimize
• Measure

WHAT’S NEW?

Before, Facebook Ads only has a 2-level structure: Campaigns and Ads.

It was in each individual campaigns that advertisers set everything: campaign goals, audience filters, budget and scheduling of ads. The Ads – there are the creatives.

This structure is particularly rigid: as it was difficult to optimize and measure ads effectiveness across different audience demographics and campaigns goals.

HENCE, THE NEW 3-LEVEL STRUCTURE: CAMPAIGN- ADS SETS- ADS.

In this new structure, you can set different campaign goals on Campaign such as branding, site visits or promote offers.

You can set your audience, budget, placements and scheduling in Ad Sets. Under each Ad sets are your Ad creatives.

To better understand, this 3-level structure allows you to:

• Separate different campaign goals from others
• Set different audience groups under each campaign
• Experiment on different Ad creatives under each demographic group.

This gives advertisers a chance to better analyze and understand how each creative content performs in a specific group of people, under each campaign goal.

Facebook has published a guide on how to bring the best out of the new Ads Campaign structure.

CAMPAIGN BEST PRACTICES:

1. Define your campaign goal.

Campaign goals are specific results set by a brand. For example, a local store will have the following objectives:

• Visits to Website
• Website Conversions
• Increase Page Post Engagement
• Likes your Page
• Install Apps
• App Engagement
• Promote Offers
• Event Responses
• Video Views

Thus a goal should be limited to some specific calls to action from a Facebook user.

2. Set up campaigns based on advertising objectives.

You can create different campaigns under each objectives. Here are a sample list of campaigns you can choose from:

3. Set the cap how much you spend across all your campaigns.

You don’t need to worry about over-spending. You can set your budget across campaigns. The Ads will stop as soon as your cap budget is reached.

4. Take note of spending for each of your campaigns.

Use the spending meter to track how much your ads had spent so far. This will let you in the loop of how much your ads costs to run, as well as compare which ad delivers better results over cost-effectiveness.

AD SET BEST PRACTICES

1. Organize ad sets by audience.

Learn to determine your audience by gender, age, location, likes and other demographic data available in the Ads Manager.

This will help you determine which audience group drives better response to your ads. For example: you can and create ad set for people you liked your Page and another for those who haven’t liked your Page yet.

One secret is to keep your Ad Set consistent so that you can easily single out the best performing Ad Sets.

2. Optimize top performing placements.

You can alternately assign one placement in an Ad Set or have multiple placements in a demographic Ad Set so optimize your ad results.

3. Set bidding to maximize performance.

Make sure that your ads have consistent optimization settings to optimize your ads; whether you are bidding for clicks, impressions or reach, your choice depends what your prefer to pay for.

4. Adjust budgets to optimize spend.

Monitor which ads perform better than the rest. Make sure your budget appropriately and equally to all top-performing ad sets.

AD BEST PRACTICES

1. Know which ad types suits your campaign objective.

Select the best types of ads to use such as link ads, photo ads, text ads, app install pages to match the needs of your campaign.

2. Come up with multiple ads to optimize creative.

As much as possible create other ad variations using a creative. For example, an ad creative can be both in form of a image or a video. This allows more optimized delivery.

3. Always monitor to improve performance of a creative.

Always make a point to record results such as number of clicks, impressions as well as rejections. This helps you see the performance of your ads in a user’s view point. Use what you have learned to improve future creatives.

4. Work within the limits of your account.

Every account can hold as much as 1000 campaigns, 1000 ad sets and 5000 ads. This only applies to live campaigns, deleted ones do not count. To better manage and track your campaigns, follow your marketing plan and run a good number of ads that you can manage.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW AD CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE?

HERE IS SAMPLE FROM MY OWN FACEBOOK PAGE:

Under the ‘proper use’ policy, effective November 5th, 2014, Facebook admins are no longer allowed to give incentives for people to like a page or use social plugins.

Incentives include: rewards, freebies, discounts and gating apps to force people to like a page first.

It will still be acceptable to incentivize users, who already Liked the page every time they visit the page or login to the app.

This is stirring up some reactions among marketers online. This is what Facebook has to say:

“To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.”

What this quote from Facebook implies is that in order for your Page Likes to grow organically, people must really like and connect with your brand in the first place.

Let us take a look at this study by Ignite Social Media.

It shows that incentives is still the top reason for people to like a page so it’s a bit shocking that Facebook would prohibit pages from doing so.  But it’s actually a VERY good thing.  If you have fans that have liked your page because you made them like your page to get something from you – they are likely not an engaged fan and the key to Facebook success is having fans that are ENGAGED with your page and your brand.

This update will challenge business owners, marketers and admins to:

• improve the content being shared on Facebook by creating genuine engagement
• maximize the use of Facebook Insights to know when your fans are online and what they “like” most
• use Facebook Ads to build a targeted audience

What do you think of the new update?  I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

What is like- baiting anyway? “Like-baiting” is when a post explicitly asks News Feed readers to like, comment or share the post in order to get additional distribution beyond what the post would normally receive.

Here are 2 good examples of like-baiting:

1. If you run contests on your Facebook page with the following mechanics: “Share and like this post to win a FREE gift”. Be aware that you can no longer ask/require the person to share the contest on their personal timeline.
2. 

Here is the rule quoted directly from Facebook’s page guidelines: 3. Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries” is not permitted).

How will this affect your Page?

It’s time to get creative with your posts. Share helpful information that your fans will share without you asking for it. Be original – be you!

What do you think of this Facebook update? How will it affect your page? Let me know your thoughts by adding a comment below!

You might just have a quick question about Facebook for your business but aren’t sure where to look – this post will give you all of the info you need. It is also going to be PACKED with TONS of Facebook resources you should know so you can maximize your Facebook marketing strategies for your business.

Make sure you bookmark the resources that are most relevant to the information you need for your business related to Facebook

1.  FACEBOOK FOR BUSINESS

This is hands down the best place to go when looking for a Facebook related question.  Whether you’re just getting started or looking to amplify existing efforts, Facebook for Business can help you understand your options and choose the appropriate strategies.  Facebook for Business is the centralized destination for news and information about marketing with Facebook.  If you’re looking for valuable tips on how to optimize your marketing efforts visit Facebook.com/Business.  You can also like their page here Facebook.com/marketing

2.  FACEBOOK STUDIO EDGE

Facebook Studio Edge offers training to help you brush up on your Facebook marketing skills, learn some new ones, and keep up with all the latest from Facebook. You can also earn recognition for your expertise in Pages and Advertising. To learn more, visit : Facebook-studio.com/education. Facebook Studio Edge also highlights different agencies and marketers’ creativity when it comes to Facebook marketing. Here Facebook  recognizes great campaigns from all corners of the world that could help you get inspired: learn fresh ideas and strategies to help strengthen up your brand online.

3.  FACEBOOK AD PRODUCTS AND SPECIFICATIONS

If you want to learn all the options you have to advertise on Facebook, their requirements, best practices and pricing, visit Facebook.com/help/ads/products.

4.  TEXT OVERLAY GRID TOOL

Upload your photos and ad creatives to see if it passes the 20% rule using this tool. It scans the image to make sure that texts in the image only 20% of the image. Too much text for Facebook, will only make it look like it is spam. This encourages people to use the headline and body of your ad to tell people more about why you’re advertising and what you want them to do. Learn more about this here…

5.  FACEBOOK PAGES

A Business page dedicated to give you more tips on utilizing and optimizing your Facebook Business Page. To like Facebook Pages click here…

6.  DEVELOPERS RESOURCE

For tech geeks, get more information on how to build, install and deploy Facebook Apps and Mobile Apps here – developers.facebook.com. You can also head over to the Facebook Developers Blog to read stories behind new features, products and apps on Facebook.

7.  FACEBOOK + COMMERCE

Facebook + Commerce = Helping Commerce partners use Facebook. Learn about best practices and tools to help you increase registration, conversions, and cart size; drive referral traffic; and deepen user insights on your site. Be part of their Facebook community here: www.facebook.com/commerce.

Mashable has written this blog post that will give you an overview of how it works – The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Commerce.

8.  FACEBOOK LIVE

Facebook Live connects you with some of the top public figures and information about what they’re working on – on and off Facebook. Go to FacebookLive.com to watch live stream events and stay tuned for announcements and Q&As with your favorite celebrities, athletes, musicians, and entertainers. More importantly, watch videos about Facebook updates and announcements.

9.  CONTACT FACEBOOK

Individuals or companies can report any violations of copyright, intellectual property, use of trademarks, abuse here…

10.  FACEBOOK POLICIES

Keep yourself abreast about Facebook’s official guidelines on Ads, Credit Terms, Pages, Platform, Payment Terms, Promotions, etc. Visit www.facebook.com/policies.

Make sure to bookmark these sites for easy access to Facebook tips and information.

Have more Facebook resources I left off the list?  Post them in the comments below!

Facebook introduces the Donate Button for non-profit pages. The company first tested this new feature in November through Red Cross after the Typhoon Haiyan disaster in the Philippines. Though Facebook’s representatives did not mention the actual amount raised from the campaign, the feature allowed users to donate through a notification found right on the top of their News Feeds.

Right now, 19 non-profit organizations have signed-up as launch partners, including DonorsChoose.org, Boys And Girls Club Of America, World Wildlife Fund, UNICEF, Red Cross, and Kiva. These groups have the Donate Button show up on the top of their Facebook Pages and at the bottom of their News Feed posts. After some tweaks more, Facebook will allow other non-profits to use the feature by simply signing up here. Upon clicking the button, users will be allowed to donate through credit card or Paypal.

Steps

1. If you don’t have a Facebook page yet, you’ll need to create one.  Refer to this previous blog post on how to create a Facebook Page. Make sure to select The “Cause or Community” or “Company, Organization or Institution” pages as a charity fan page.

* If you need to assign team members as page administrators, you can add them as you set up the page or do it later.

2. Find the Donate Button Application by First Giving. On the top menu, click “Create Button”

3. Type in the name of your charity or organization. Results will pop up below the text box. Click on your charity name when it appears on the list.

4. Install the app on your Facebook Page. Choose the page you have created to install the donation button “Install on Fan Page” button to the right of your page’s profile picture.

5. Click “Add Donation Button Creator” . A popup notification will appear and ask permission so the app can access your page. This will add the app to your page.

6. You should be able to find the Donate app next to“Photos”

7. To edit the button setting, click on the “Donate” button. As administrator, you should be directed to the page where you can “Edit Donate Settings”. You can now use the button to change the charity or other settings of the donation such as change the verbiage to “Support Our Cause” rather than “Donate”

With this new feature, users will no longer have to go outside of the Facebook platform to donate to your charity. A pop-out window will appear on Facebook and will make the donation process Easy as 1-2-3!

Here’s what it will look like when you’re all done…

Donors can choose how much to give and can enter payment details or just use the ones already saved on Facebook. The easy pop-out guarantees you’re charity will boost conversion rates and raise more funds for projects in need.

Now go raise some money for your cause and let me know in the comments below what charity YOU are passionate about – I’d love to hear

Business owners need to understand how best to respond to these types of social scenarios and Facebook recently unveiled the 6 trends they found after a full day dedicated to Compassion-focused research.

Facebook’s 4th Compassion Research Day was held Thursday December 5th at their Menlo Park, Calif. HQ.

Here’s what was on the agenda:

• What happens around the world when somebody uses emoticons,
• The things they learned about how teens navigate cyber-bullying as well as suggested tools to support them.
• Providing tools to veteran users and affiliation.
• What does and does not work in what they learned about difficult status updates.

In this event, the compassion team discovered six important trends, while working with researchers from from Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, Stanford University, Northeastern University, Claremont McKenna University, as well as other institutions.

Prior to the introduction of the six trends, Facebook said that:

Conflicts, as well as other challenges in relationships are impossible to avoid, in both online and offline situations. As these are the realities of life, researchers are now beginning to discover how non-verbal rules in human interaction affect attitudes and behavior online.

Facebook, while working with top researchers studying the science of emotion, is now digging into how conflict affects users’ lives on the web – transcending language, culture values and social norms on how they define as respectful behavior.

…the six trends were:

1. Users can create a safer, more respectful online environment.
   In situations in which Facebook’s community standards are not violated, but people are still unsatisfied, Facebook will suggest utilizing messaging tools and engaging more to pro-active conversations. According to Facebook, 85% of the time users are asked to remove photos that other users find embarrassing, 65% of message recipients feels positive, and 25 percent feels neutral.
2. People accept feedback graciously.
   About 63% Facebook users reacted positively on messages about the controversial posts they made. 62% said that they have no issues on being asked to delete posts of concern.
3. Most people do not mean to offend others.
   Only 1 out of 10 users who are asked to remove a post update admitted that they made it such to provoke others or get a message across.
4. People will use the tools offered to them, if they are effective.
   Facebook’s team said that when they began to implement solutions to help alerting users about controversial content, it only provided a blank message box to fill in, with just 20% users would send a ticket. Now, about 3.9 million conversations weekly are being facilitated using updated tools.
5. Emoticons help people express themselves better online.
   Facebook reported that users uses emoticons with “impressive levels of accuracy”. This is especially helpful to people from South America and North Africa.
6. Approaching an old problem with new tools:
   The social network mentioned its Bullying Prevention Hub, as well as “new contextual resources are the heart of the Facebook product.”

Watch the event presentation here:

As a company, business or brand: have you encountered an uncomfortable situation on Facebook? How did you handle it?

After Facebook released this PDF report, they became more straightforward that marketers will have to start paying to play if they want to be seen in the newsfeed.

Facebook’s filtering algorithm, also known as EdgeRank aims to show more of what users care the most about and less of what they are not interested in.

The result: expect a slow decline in the organic distribution of business Pages’ posts as Facebook continues to work towards more relevant user experience on the site. Your posts will have greater chances of showing-up organically in your fan’s (as well as their friends’) news feeds if it is relevant to them and they are engaging The Facebook News Feed is evolving now into what we call a personalized newsletter. It simply means that Facebook gives priority to a brand’s posts if the fans and their friends engage more on the content the Page publishes: the number of likes, shares and comments.

According to Ignite Social Media, “Facebook once said that brand posts reach approximately 16% of their fans. That number is no longer achievable for many brands, and our analysis shows that roughly 2.5% is now more likely for standard posts on large pages. So, a year ago a brand could expect to reach 16 out of 100 fans and now that brand is lucky if they get 3 out of 100. Chilling news for brand pages who have invested resources to “build” a large following of fans.”

As a test, Facebook guru Jon Loomer did some experimenting. Of the 373 stories loaded in his timeline, it was distributed as follows:

• 239 Stories from Friends (64.1%)
• 106 Organic Stories from Pages (28.4%)
• 25 Ads (6.7%)
• 3 Stories from Lists (0.8%)

Read more about the results of his experiment here…

How will this change affect business owners?

Of course, getting people to pay for something they had for free before can make some people angry or worse – make them steer clear of Facebook marketing altogether.

One claim is that there will come a time that brands can no longer be seen in the News Feed without paying for ads. As of now this is not the case since in the experiment, 28.4% of the contents are organically from Pages.

Another concern is that Facebook is trying to prevent brands from being shown to people who are actually following their posts. However, Jon discusses in his post that if you are engaged with brands, you’ll still see their posts.  He mentions brands he follows such as Mashable, TechCrunch are still showing in his News Feed.

Obviously, Facebook makes their own rules as their platform is free to users and we all know they need to make their shareholders happy.

So what does this mean for business owners and their pages?  Here are some tips you can follow to ensure you get the best reach possible:

1. Post Consistently – a general rule of thumb is 2x per day
2. Get to know your fans – ask questions to get them engaged
3. Run Ads – try running some ads and see how it impacts your organic reach.  Who knows, you might just like running ads and see some great results

I’d love to hear from you guys in the comments if you’re seeing a decline in your reach (and if you are about reach at all!)

It’s hard (not to mention time consuming) trying to find interesting content to write each day but it’s proving even more difficult to find the right content to share that is relevant to their fans.

The Facebook News Feed is placed on the center of the home page for a good reason: to highlight what your friends are doing –especially the links they share.

News links increase the relevance of the post and the more links are shared – the better as far as Facebook is concerned.

As a matter of fact, more people are now tuning in to Facebook for stories about things they care about; from live news coverage, to Miss Universe, to sports scores, to the latest meme images and inspirational quotes.

It was reported in October that Facebook’s average referral traffic to media sites has increased over 170%, which was 3x more than the previous year. Facebook has enhanced the newsfeed with more controls and the #hashtag to help you keep track of the topics that matter and are relevant to your page.

Facebook is using an algorithm (known to some as Edge Rank) to determine which stories matter, which includes the number of likes, comments, who posted it as well as the type of post (whether it is a photo, video, or a status update). It enables people to discuss and share what’s happening. With the algorithm, Facebook focuses more on what makes high-quality content, particularly when it comes to mobile.

But why does Facebook need to sort out stories and why do they determine which stories get “bumped” in your newsfeed? Why don’t they just serve up everything to our newsfeed? It is because of relevance. They want to give people a better user experience by just showing what people want to see. In the near future, the News Feed will be able to determine the difference between high-quality articles from any mediocre content hosted outside Facebook. This means that the News Feed will give more prominence for valuable news related links and articles over other types of content.

How to find stories to share for your Facebook Business Page?

1. Log-in to your Facebook account and switch As Your Page
   
2. Like and follow as many people/page relevant to your niche. Include reputable news and media sites.
3. While posting as the page admin, click on Home. There you will see what companies, brands and the people you follow are talking about.
4. Select the stories you want to share. You can share it at that time, or better yet, pre-schedule to post at a later date (this helps you get more posts ready for later!)

Facebook just launched – Similar To – which is a simple feature that appears under a post on your page.

To make the News Feed more suitable to people’s interests, Facebook is now suggesting articles or posts that are “similar.” Once you click on the post, about three more articles similar to what you have read will show up beneath the post feed. This will help you discover more content you may find interesting and shareable on your own Facebook Page timeline. You will never have to miss out on the topics you care about.

See it in action here:

The key to all of this is to know that Facebook’s research shows that people prefer links to quality articles or news vs. just an image or meme and they will start showing more of this type of content in people’s newsfeeds so take note and start created AND sharing this type of content.

You should see an increase in your reach of your fan page if you start following these rules.

I’d love to hear in the comments below this post if you guys have seen a drop in your reach with these recent changes.