Facebook is rolling out all kinds of changes to Fan pages today… but it wouldn’t surprise me if the MOST interesting change flies under the radar for just a bit. What is the most interesting change? The one I’m seeing is that you can now buy an ad for an individual status update!
Here’s the screenshot I get when I click on the “promote” button:
For those of us following changes to Fan Pages, this really shouldn’t be a surprise (I actually mentioned this change when talking about the future of Facebook at a recent Leading RE conference in Vegas)… But here’s why it’s interesting.
When thinking about how to approach Facebook marketing, it’s all about Status Updates! I got some polite ribbing from the Roost guys at the same conference when I mentioned that agents should just roll their eyes at SEO and/or Tab “solutions” when on Facebook, but I’ll stick by my guns on this one. Don’t bother with any Facebook unless you’re planning on doing the hard work of generating status updates that will get people to interact. Anything else on Facebook is just work avoidance.
Why are status updates so important? This has to everything to do with Facebook’s recommendation engine, or as I like to call it, NEO. Again, I’m gonna stick by my guns on this one as as well and say that going forward networking engine optimization, or optimizing content for the social networking algorithms, is going to become a huge industry similar to SEO today. So, if you want to get an idea of why these “promoted posts” are such a big deal, it has everything to do with the ability to get more activity on your status updates… even if you have to pay for it!
UPDATE
I went ahead and bought an ad to point to a FB status update and was thrilled to see that by default, FB point ads at the “friends of fans.”
In my early exploration of NEO, I was calling the concept FOF Marketing because the social networks do such a great job helping people reach the “friend of friends, friends of fans and/or friends of followers”, so thought it was a bit catchy… However, I don’t think FOF tells the story behind the concept as well as NEO.
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NEO is the future of establishing a strong online presence. I, for one, look forward to your updates on this realm of what is pretty much uncharted territory. Best of luck and keep us updated.
Thank you much Mariah… In some ways, a good grasp of NEO (either intuitively or otherwise) seems like a critical piece to having ANY success on with a public presence on Facebook. Seems like so many people fail because they don’t understand that facebook’s recommendation engine determines your success there more than any other factor (similar to how a good grasp of Google’s recommendation “engine” is critical to having any luck with SEO).
Hi Dustin, I’m still not sure why I’d promote a single update as opposed to the Page. I get why I’d promote a Facebook event with an ad but a single update? Not so sure. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with this feature. 🙂
Great question… After writing this post, I took a drive that gave me some time to think through things a bit more and I realized I was nearly clear enough about how I’m thinking about posts, updates, seo, neo, adwords, fb ads, etc. But I think I have an idea I’m going to try to articulate in just a bit that will hopefully bring a few of the ideas together in a more structured and logical way.
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Do you know if they are slowly rolling out these changes? I saw a notice about the “likes” on FB, but mine suggests I have people become Fans still. I also don’t see how to promote a post, only the page.
yeah… my guess is that they’re just rolling things out slowly. Give it another day or so and you’ll likely see all the changes, unless of course, they reverse the changes because they decide some aren’t ready for prime time! For my page, everything reverted back to “fans” a bit ago, although I still have access to “promote” posts
Dustin, I guess the promote posts will mean that agents who currently upload listings onto Facebook could advertise that update, but surely unless they want people to see the positive comments made on Facebook about that property, surely they would be better off promoting a link back to their website than an individual status update? Don’t you think???.
Greg: I’m thinking that agents who are uploading listings onto Facebook are probably missing the point of how to use the tool. FB is super-quick to take down non-performing ads (even quicker than google from my experience), so unless it’s a super-interesting listing, it’s likely to be a waste of time to buy a Facebook ad for a listing.
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Great post. The number of Facebook users is huge and growing (even my grandma started using it recently;) ) and they are fantastic target group for virtually every kind of business.
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I also promote some of my affiliate links on Facebook by making Facebook fan pages and also by advertising on Facebook..~:
Dustin, any further updates on your ad? What is/was the desired response from those who clicked through? Comments? Interaction?
Great question Alex… I haven’t checked it out in a while. I’m in the middle of a project today, but when I get some time to play a bit (hopefully soon!), I’ll give an update on the campaign!