Facebook launches new tools to help Pages better target their audiences and, better understand the impact of their social posts.
In a recent Facebook new feed via their media hub, they have announced a new toolset for online publishers. In an effort to help publishers with their online marketing by offering a new set of Tools for Facebook Pages. What Facebook hopes to accomplish is allowing publishers to make more informed decisions when it comes to their marketing tactics.
To view the Visit your Domain Insights dashboard to access the new features and give them a whirl!
New Publishing Tools!
These product updates are the result of Facebook listening to publishers for the last 2-3 months. They decided to better improve the platform; publishers needed access to more tools and features to improve their marketing. Product Manager, Holly Orsmeth said “as a result, we’ve created new tools for media publishers, made improvements to Insights, and have added more resources and communication channels for publishers.”
Here are the most recent tools released by Facebook to help in Page targeting and optimization.
Interest Targeting
The new targeting tool will allow for increased targeting by topic or Interest (or keyword) for posts! This will allow marketers to research out interests and users who have ‘liked’ your business Page and present them with posts that directly relate to their interests.
With this new change, and as posts are made and published by the Facebook Page, it will go directly to the news feed which corresponded to the subset audience “of people that like your page.” This helps keep your brand visible to the people who are already ‘evangelists’ of your company, products, services or other.
“The new targeting feature is available to all Pages that have enabled the Targeting and Privacy setting, and is currently only accessible on desktop version.” Facebook went on to say, so make sure to login, and enable this new tool right away!
Facebook Interest Targeting.
Post End Date
The Post End Date feature allows Page administrators to specify “and day and time to stop showing a post in the News Feed.” This new feature allows publishers to control their marketing at an even more granular level
What does this control feature actually do you might ask? Well, think of it like this. If you owned a store, online or otherwise and were posting a ‘sale offer’ but had a limit on the amount of time that sale was in effect (say for 1 day), then you could add the post to promote it, and set the Post End Date. Then, you could use the targeting feature above to reach out to those who have already liked your company page to promote it, while at the same time, set a Post End Date to remove it from the feed. Using these tactics would also improve the user experience by not providing content and promotional posts that are no longer valid to your viewers, thus keeping them happy customers. People hate being spammed and in my opinion as an online shopper – coming across a sale for something that is no longer valid.
Post End Date – Sample Image of the new Expiry date filed for Facebook Posts.
Smart Publishing!
Facebook is tipping the scales with this new Smart publishing feature (currently only available to a select few organizations).
Publishers have always found it hard to determine which posts resonated with their audiences. This new Smart Publishing tool will help identify and post stories that are popular with people on Facebook.
For those ‘featured business Pages’ that will be granted access to this tool, it will “automatically display your most shared content in the news feeds of people who like your page.” (Via Matt Southern at SearchEngineJournal.com). The Smart feature setting does need to be activated from inside your account. Once enabled, “frequently shared links to your website will appear for people who have liked your Page.”
The posts will not only show up on your company wall Page, but it will also open up new avenues of data in your analytics, moderate comments
Facebook did go onto say that they hope to roll out this new feature to a broader range of Pages in the coming months, but for now, it’s only available to a select few. So make sure to keep an eye on this tool.
And last but not least!
Improved Insights
With the improved insights announcement, Facebook introduces new data that is critical to any media organization with a mission to understand and optimize the content that is performing on the site. They have “made a variety of improvements to Domain Insights to show how Pages and social plugins drive traffic to websites.”
Improved Insights with Facebook.
Facebook has added a “new top URL’s section, which displays URL-level reporting” while also showing other Pages and influencers that have shared a post you’ve made to Facebook.
So, to provide an example, if a high level Facebook profile shares a post or article you have shared, and that specific article gains traction, and larger amounts of reach in your feed – the Insights tool will provide you with that data. This will tell you why that specific URL might have reached more people, compared to other posts you might have made that week, or month. A huge benefit to seeing how your content moves through the feed and reacts with your customer base. The tool also has new and more intuitive designs to provide more segmented ways to sort through the data, which gives you insights into specific time ranges, including hourly.
Make sure to check back often to ensure you are up to date on the Facebook media news!
Rob May
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