When it comes to the basics of Facebook marketing, the marketing manager needs to understand the difference between a business account and a personal account, the criteria used to determine what appears in a news feed, and how Facebook interprets relevance based on ‘commitment.
The first thing to understand in Facebook marketing is that there is a difference between a personal Facebook account and a professional Facebook account. Facebook designates them respectively as a Facebook profile and a Facebook page. Personal vs. Professional Facebook Account A Facebook profile is a user’s personal Facebook page where they share personal content, such as images, as well as other content they find interesting, with friends and family. Other content can be stories, articles, memes, etc.
that the user deems appropriate to share on his timeline. A Facebook page is a company-specific web page in Facebook where the company attempts to create fans by posting content that generates likes, comments / responses, and shares. A Facebook page is what a business needs to create Facebook ads. Please note that your Facebook profile is separate from your Facebook page. Your friends and family see your Facebook profile, but won’t automatically see your Facebook page unless they choose to become a fan and commit to it.
Facebook News Feed The next thing to understand when it comes to Facebook marketing is that there are four factors that Facebook uses to determine the content it places on a user’s news feed.
- Inventory – is all of the available content available for Facebook, such as the number of posts from friends and family, groups the user has joined, and professional Facebook pages the user is a fan of. The more connections the user has, the more Facebook must take inventory into account and the less likely it is that a piece of content will be placed higher in the user’s news feed.
- Signals – see a list of user actions that help Facebook prioritize the content they want to see most on their news feed. Examples of signals include likes, comments / responses, and shares. It is also useful to understand that Facebook gives more weight to engagement from a Facebook profile (personal Facebook account) than engagement from a Facebook page (professional Facebook account) .
- Predictions – are where Facebook uses the user’s own profile information, such as declared interests and demographic information, as well as their past behaviors (likes, comments / responses and shares) to decide what the user wants to see.
- Purpose – refers to the value assigned to a piece of content that Facebook users determine the relevance of the content. Facebook then uses these four factors to control the content displayed in the user’s news feed. From a Facebook marketing perspective, since you cannot control the number of connections a user has, the algorithms that Facebook uses to calculate its predictions, or how it ranks content, your job is to focus on influence of the type of signals that the user sends to Facebook. Ideally, you want the user to take meaningful interactions such as likes, comments / responses, and shares.
Facebook Commitments When you place your content in front of a potential customer, you need the user to engage with him so that he becomes a fan. There
are three basic engagement types from which a user can choose. Like – A Like sends a signal to Facebook that the user has at least an interest in learning more about your brand. A simple “like” is very little weighted by Facebook. Facebook interprets a Like as “It’s interesting”.
Likes in this context also include the emojis “Love”, “Haha”, “Wow”, “Sad” and “Angry” applied to a given post. Comment / Response – A comment or response sends a stronger signal to Facebook. Facebook interprets a comment or response as “Yeah, that’s what I thought”. Share – Sharing sends the strongest signal to Facebook. Facebook interprets a share as “Wow, my friends really need to see this!”.
This is the ultimate goal of any Facebook marketing campaign because it represents word of mouth approval and puts your message in front of the network. friends of the user When it comes to Facebook marketing, ideally you want to create content that the user will want: Share with their relationships Create comments or responses to Give a Like to Content that receives no commitment from no user is considered irrelevant, is rated very low by Facebook, and will likely remain invisible User Persona As a Facebook marketer, you also need to understand why the user is on Facebook in the first place. not open Facebook to buy goods or services. Users open their Facebook app to see what their friends and connections are doing. ance, users use Facebook to perpetuate a character they wish to see their friends.
The last point of perpetuating a character is interesting. If a piece of content is, in fact, interesting to a user, but does not conform to the personality that the user wants everyone to know about it, that cannot generate engagement. In addition, users are unlikely to share content that is incompatible with the character they want others to apply to them. For example, if most of a person’s important relationships, such as coworkers, have a Republican political point of view, but the user has more of a Democratic political bias, that user cannot engage in a message that could reveal to others that it is a democratic closet, even if the content makes sense to them. Likewise, it is unlikely that they will share a post of them at a Democratic rally, as this does not correspond to the personality they wish to perpetuate.
Facebook interprets this lack of engagement as irrelevant content for the user, and Facebook will put a little emphasis on this type of content in the future. Additionally, excessive sharing or engagement with content that supports the personality the user wants to perpetuate will send a signal to Facebook that the user likes this type of content, and Facebook will provide even more of this type of content. in a user’s news feed. Marketers Understand How User Engagement And Facebook’s Algorithm Fuel The Echo Effect, Where Users Begin To See More Content To Which They Respond And Less Content From Sources With An Alternative Or Different Perspective . This echo-chamber effect has led to increased levels of polarization and bias in the general population, as a user receives more and more content similar to the content with which he has previously engaged and little or no content.
from opposite points of view. The fact has led many marketers to produce highly polarizing content in order to evoke the social reaction “Share” much appreciated and rated by a user. As I shared in the Be controversial post for spreading your message, companies that simply share solid and popular content will be relegated to the Facebook content basket. Polarizing and often highly controversial content stimulates users’ emotions and creates more engagement, thereby propagating the content. Conclusion A user’s news feed is affected by their actions.
Content that causes the user to interact with him will tell Facebook to show him more. If Facebook predicts that a user will like a particular piece of content and the user does not agree to it, Facebook will show the user less in the future. Therefore, as a Facebook marketer, you must first integrate your content into a user’s news feed. This content must be emotional enough and correspond to the signals that the user wants to send to his connections to get them to interact with your brand, or soon your content will disappear completely from his news feed. Do you understand the basics of Facebook marketing? Steve built and sold several successful multi-million dollar businesses.
Since 2002, he has supervised and advised thousands of clients on their entrepreneurial journey. Steve has written 10 books related to entrepreneurship and is the content creator for his blog site. … See the complete profile>