Facebook News – Newsfeeds Feed No News In Australia

Facebook News? Not In Australia!

Facebook News from down under…

What a way to wake up this morning!

Overnight Facebook implemented restrictions on publishers & Australian users sharing or viewing Australian & international news content.

So people opened their business pages this morning to find that the page was still there – but the content was gone. All gone – not just the news posts, but photos, the cover photo and everything.

Facebook News, The Marketer Page is Restricted

It’s still all there of course, but we can’t see it here in Australia.

After contacting Facebook chat support, it seems the distinction is pages connected to a site with an Australian news domain. So we qualify. In the same bucket as the big boys. Flattering…but a bit unfair!

Other fall-out

Some non-news pages have been wrapped up in this restriction like the BOM, DFES and some community health and NFP pages. As I write this some of them have been reinstated.

So what the heck is this Facebook News thing all about?

I’ll explain.

Facebook and the Australian government have been negotiating for years about paying for content. Here’s the “sides” of the argument:

In the red corner

The government’s stance is that news publishers should be paid for posting their content on Facebook.

The government claims that news is of value and should be paid for, ok – that’s fine, but advertising on news websites and paywalls pay for news content…

And there’s no coincidence this has happened the same week that Google had to get out its checkbook (or really just the coins in it’s centre console) to pay up for news content in deals it struck with Seven West Network and Channel Nine ($30m per year btw)

This claim supposes the money paid by Facebook – important distinction, not to the government, to the publishers (this has nothing to do with who pays how much tax where and when) will result in preserving the integrity of journalism.

Lofty.

IMO: Our government doesn’t care about the integrity of journalism. It’s quite clear by the way they’ve dealt with the ABC.

In the blue corner

Facebook’s stance is that the publishers are the ones posting content (they don’t have to – it’s voluntary) as a distribution method and therefor as Facebook doesn’t need the content and hasn’t taken the content (it is volunteered) then there’s nothing TO pay for.

News media get their clicks from distribution channels; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email, etc. Facebook is just one of them. The balance of benefit it weighted towards the publisher and not Facebook.

The best analogy I hear is that it’s like the paper boy paying The West every time he delivers a newspaper. That’s not how payment works….the receiver pays – not the deliverer.

In Facebook’s statement (linked below) they make it clear that it’s unlike Google, and users must actively post their content on their platform.

IMO: Yep. It’s different to Google. But most publishers (good ones at least) make special effort to be displayed on Google, so while Facebook is completely different there as it’s a choice to post, what to post, when, etc I don’t think Google should pay for content either.

Some Facebook News Thoughts

The timing of this isn’t a coincidence!

Earlier in the week there was a post in my Facebook group from a member which I’ll share with their permission:

These screenshots were shared on the 12th of February with a suspicion it had something to do with the proposed law changes. I replied that I thought they would be testing the fall out on a small group of users and that the member must have been in that group.

I think Facebook knew this functionality wasn’t flawless and that they had to deploy it as time’s running out to negotiate/amend the laws (and not only time, but the government’s willingness to negotiate or bother to learn how the internet and social media operate) and they rolled it out anyway.

This did cause (and is still causing some) issues with non-news pages being swept up in the restrictions.

The Bureau Of Meteorology, DFES and several community health and NFP pages were restricted. As well as Buggybuddies, So Perth, Urbanlist, Perth Is Ok, Zac Kirkup and many more.

The BOM and DFES are back up now. Buggybuddies has put through an appeal, but probably counts under the government’s very (deliberately) broad definition of “publisher” but we’ll update if and when we hear anything.

Facebook News Info, Resources, and Stuff I Collected

Starting with the official things:

The Facebook article explaining the changes by William Easton, Managing Director, Facebook Australia & New Zealand

Facebook’s Timeline of supporting news in Australia – or as I call it, “we tried”

The Facebook Help article

The link to appeal the restrictions if your page shouldn’t have been affected

What’s being said out there?

My Facebook group thread with heaps of info, stories and links you’ll have to request membership to be able to see this by the way.

Click the images for the link to the original posts.

WA Premier Mark McGowan almost gets it.

Interestingly his page survived while his Liberal counterpart’s didn’t.

Adam Bandt misses the point…but does HAVE a point instead of rolling out the TAXES argument which has nothing to do with anything…

Betoota nails it from a publisher POV (as usual).

And, surprisingly they’re still able to post links…

The world is looking on with interest, and…bemusement?

So there’s the shitshow that was my morning, dealing with the shock and confusion of clients, peers and the public and now I’ve finally got all this post down I’m going to get back to work…while I still have work.

The Wash

Pages this has affected can’t post at all.

Even non-news.

Even Facebook Stories.

Support your favourite pages by signing up to their email databases as that’s the only way they might be able to share their content with you for a while (or ever?)

Before I go here’s my recommendations is this has affected your page/s –

- - Appeal here.
  - Remove your website link if it would be considered “news” or a “publisher” based in Australia.
  - Change your page category from publisher to blog or community.
  - Wait and keep an eye on your support inbox.

Get in touch with us at hey@themarketer.news if you have a story on this to feature.

Join my group where I’m curating resources in real time, and if you’re in Perth and want to talk face-to-face, come along to our Grill The Marketer event Thursday the 25th. I’m sure we’ll touch on it briefly, lol!

Peace!

June 17, 2019May 19, 2020

Facebook Avatar Stickers – a first look

Facebook announced Avatar Stickers last year, and now they’re HERE!

Edited to add:

Obviously the Facebook Avatars have had a wider roll-out to Australia and the US as I’ve had countless messages from people trying to set theirs up.

So I’ve added some info to help you.

Step one:

Grab your phone or tablet (not a desktop or laptop)

Step two:

Go to the top right corner menu and press the down arrow which will open Facebook’s main menu as shown in the screenshot below:

Step three:

Got down to “See More” and the following menu will open:

Step four:

Choose “Avatar” and follow the prompts!

This is the original post from June 17th, 2019.

Facebook Avatar Stickers are here, and by here I mean LIVE in Australia – to some users.

Since they’re still rolling out for a lot of people I thought I’d share a bit about it and show you mine.

I had this prompt show up in my newsfeed:

So, of course I had to try it!

If you don’t get the prompt, try adding a comment to a post and press the sticker button to expand the sticker menu. You’ll get the search icon on the left, then your most recent stickers, then a lady waving (at least mine is a lady waving circled below. If you’re a man this could be a man? Not sure…)

If you tap that lady waving icon, you’ll be prompted to make your Facebook Avatar Sticker.

It takes you through the process of setting up your avatar so it looks like you.

You first choose your skin tone (so for me that’s the second whitest) but there’s quite a few options.

Next you choose your hairstyle and colour

Then face shape.

Next – the eyes! First a shape, then a colour, and then eye makeup.

My eyes are green and there’s a couple to choose from as you can see above.

Then it’s onto the all-important eyebrows!

Choose a shape and then a colour to best match your own (or the ones you draw on every day, lol)

The next one is glasses.

There’s quite a few shape options here for the bespectacled.

Now for the nose!

I found this the hardest one to match as the shading on top and bottom of the larger noses makes them look weird and huge. I went with a nose that’s most likely much smaller than my IRL nose so I didn’t get that shading effect.

Next is the lips:

Shape (above) and colour (below). There are quite a few lip colour options.

Next is facial hair and colour:

I’d say they’ll probably add way more options here as the product rolls out.

Then it was onto body type.

There’s not a lot of options here, and although the skin colours are quite inclusive, there’s no real body type options for anyone without the standard 2 arms and 2 legs. I’d suspect they add to these to be more inclusive.

Next you choose from the limited outfit choices.

There are a few options for hats to mix it up a bit more and also head coverings.

I chose not to add a hat.

And that’s it – you’re done! Admire yourself in Facebook Avatar sticker form. You’d imagine that as time goes on (assuming the Facebook Avatar Stickers are widely adopted) that companies would be able to sponsor clothing, hats etc. maybe even lipstick shades.

You can use these Facebook Avatar Stickers to comment on posts both in the newsfeed and on Messenger.

So far these are the options I have available.

Screenshots from Messenger.

The above image also shows where the Facebook Avatar Stickers are accessed – show here as the waving avatar next to the clock face icon on the bottom menu on my phone whilst in Messenger (I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 8)

There’s a few options that cover the standard On My Way, Congratulations, OMG etc.

and then the ever-useful bachelorette sticker? Can’t really see myself using that one…

So that’s it – Facebook Avatar Stickers explored.

Do you have them yet? You might not as they roll out to different countries and profiles at different times.

Let me know what you think, is it a dumb gimmick that’s come too late behind Bitstrips, Snapchat and Bitmoji? A great new addition to Facebook’s features – or something else entirely?

January 20, 2018January 21, 2018

Facebook Apocalypse | Actionable Tips To Negotiate The Fallout

Facebook set it’s house on fire by changing how the newsfeed works – so what do we all do now?

There’s some things in Social Media Marketing that will always be true. I’m going to start with those, as many publishers and brands will really need to go back to the basics to make sure they are still reaching their audience.

These are simple, but often overlooked and there’s only 3 main ones…

1. Strategy

What do you WANT from your Facebook activity? What does success look like for your accounts?

Is it sales, brand awareness, leads, customer service?

Think about what you actually want to achieve by being on Facebook in the first place. What’s the best way to achieve your goals, bearing in mind Facebook is saying they will be preferencing “meaningful” content that evokes deeper thought and attracts long comments.

I’ll outline a few formats I think will still be viable under this newsfeed change in the next section.

2. Audience

Your Facebook page isn’t for you.

Let that sink in.

It can be ABOUT you, but it’s supposed to be for your AUDIENCE. Facebook’s trying to put the Social back into Social Media.

What does going back to basics here look like? Stop creating content you like, and put your efforts into content that means something to your audience. Keep it relevant, put some thought into who your audience is, what they’re day looks like, when they want to hear from you and you should see success with Facebook’s new focus – creating a meaningful experience, keeping you safe from the newsfeed update.

Dive into your insights and check out who your audience are (you might be surprised) and always keep them central to your content creation (or curation)

You may need to post less often to achieve success here, but putting the extra thought into your content, and cutting down on your frequency could definitely help your newsfeed visibility.

3. Community Management

This one has been around as long as Facebook itself, but it’s lost a bit of shine, at least to me if I’m honest. I’d say this was mainly due to the amount of effort it takes to run a community, the fact that you can’t really measure community ROI, and the declining organic newsfeed reach which pushed all us former Community Mangers into the realm of Paid.

Having said that, it’s always been important to answer the questions, queries and issues of your fans and customers on your Facebook page. It’s Social after all!

In the announcements by Facebook in the previous week they’ve stated that simply replying to all your comments isn’t enough. They say they don’t care about page-to-person interaction (I have a hunch they still keep tabs on it, like they do with answered messages in Messenger, but I have no proof) they only care about person-to-person interaction.

So if you already have a community of active commenters, who participate in thoughtful conversions about the topics around your brand – this is going to be a huge advantage! If you don’t it looks like trying to build one is the key here.

I’m not going to lie, starting from scratch is going to take a lot of effort on your part, especially if you’re a small business. For larger businesses this will mean they might decide to dedicate a Social Media team member to “conversation starter” rather than simply moderating comments or providing customer service.

It also makes me wonder about the Telcos. If you’ve been on a Telco page lately (or ISP for that matter) you’ll find long, detailed accounts of people’s greivances. Is this what Facebook will end up preferencing in the newsfeed? Might be good news for NFPs and cause related communities?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see…

Another thought pops into my head about trolls. Will brands now ‘Fake Troll’ themselves to get longer comments? Yuk. Let’s hope not.

Ok, so that’s my 3 back to basics tips. Bring ~~Sexy~~ Social Back with a re-think about your strategy and why you are on Facebook in the first place, ALWAYS post audience-first, and have a plan to engage your community.

How are you going to stay ‘newsfeed visible’ though?

It’s all very well and good for the answer to be “create better content” but HOW?

Here’s some tips I think will still be effective on Facebook, depending on your niche and audience.

Facebook Live

Facebook Live generates heaps of interaction. I wouldn’t say long comments per se, but it’s an awesome way to get your content seen in the newsfeed. If you haven’t thought about how you could go live with a tutorial, or something that helps your audience then the time is now.

AMAs

Ask Me Anythings would be a good way to get people thinking, writing longer comments and having meaningful interactions in their newsfeed. As a brand or business owner there’s surely things you know that your audience would be interested in. You could always invite guests in your niche to answer questions for your audience to keep it interesting.

You could even schedule these as Facebook Lives! Double whammy.

Facebook Groups

This newsfeed update will affect groups to a degree, but they tend to inspire more thoughtful dialogue as people feel safer to share in a group of likeminded people.

Perhaps your brand could benefit from it’s own group?

Facebook Events

As well as groups, events get a lot more interaction than pages. If your brand hosts events you can use them to help keep the interaction from the event off the main page and in one spot where it’s easily manageable, but more importantly you can promote them too (as long as they have more than 15 “attending” responses)

The final one is pretty obvious…

Facebook Ads

There’s a way you can get your important content into the newsfeed. You can pay for it to appear there.

Facebook did announce they were running out of ad inventory, but everything they’ve mentioned so far in this newsfeed update hasn’t included ads.

But don’t be fooled into thinking you can just boost a post that wasn’t written with your audience in mind and achieve success.

I think this newsfeed update has made sure we all know Facebook is getting serious about the social aspect of Social Media, and with potentially more brands moving into the paid realm, ads may get more expensive.

Over to you readers, what do you think? Have you seen any changes on your newsfeed yet? I’d love to know!

January 13, 2018January 13, 2018

Facebook Zero | OMG! | Algorithm Armageddon

Facebook Zero, the algorithm armageddon!

If you use Social Media for promoting your business, chances are you follow a couple (if not tonnes) of Social Media related publishers, and you would no doubt have seen a huge reaction from the community about the latest announcement from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg (below) where he states they’ll be changing the way they select posts to display to users in the newsfeed.

This update is stated to prioritise user to user interaction and focus on quality of engagement – which appears to mean time spent and meaningfulness, favouring longer, well thought out comments over tagging friends in memes or simple reactions.

Cue freakouts over Facebook page reach.

Facebook seems to be taking aim at the passiveness of users simply scrolling the newsfeed and not interacting, and publishers – including those looking to game the system with engagement bait (which Facebook announced they were cracking down on a couple of weeks back)

BUT there’s so much we don’t know!

Facebook Zero – Really?

Social Media Examiner was one of the first (naturally as probably the most well know Social Media publisher) to get vocal and ask if this was “Facebook Zero” in an 11 minute live video (below)

Would pages get any organic reach? Are we all doomed to the naughty corner? Are our Facebook pages going to be put out on the lawn with the big TVs and DVD players?

Let’s just calm down and look at what we know for a sec, which to be honest isn’t much.

If you’ve been in this world a while you know for a fact every time the newsfeed algo is tweaked people lose their minds, and each time we adjust, measure, test, refine and evaluate our accounts to try and work out a way to stay relevant and SEEN by our target audience, followers and fans – both organically and using paid distribution.

Let’s remember we all use Facebook differently!

You get the newsfeed you deserve.

I have quoted this before, a friend of mine said it to me once and it’s so true. If you hate your newsfeed – I’m sorry to say you did that to yourself. There’s so many options to unfollow people who annoy you, unfriend people you have no interest in, hit “see first”on pages and people you like, and generally reacting to things you’re actually interested in.

Facebook’s smart at figuring out what we like – but it’s not flawless. If you hate cats – stop tagging your friends in cat videos. Facebook thinks you like cats and will show you more cat content, pretty simple right? If you want to know more about the newsfeed read my post here.

You see, Facebook’s ONE JOB is to learn what you like and optimise your experience to that so it can keep you on the platform longer. Mainly to serve more ads (to make more money) but also to make sure you aren’t using the other platforms (except Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp since it owns those)

But so what, Carma? What’s this got to do with this new Facebook Zero announcement?

The curated newsfeed

I, and probably many other Social Media Marketers might not be typical users – but we know one thing, and that is that Facebook has made a pretty big assumption in the basis for this update: that we want to see more content from our friends in our newsfeeds. For me this is not the case (soz friends)

People think the newsfeed has become a crowded place for ads and page updates, and they aren’t seeing enough posts from the people they care about. I don’t find this the case, as I’d rather read a breaking story from ABC News than another “creative” engagement, pregnancy or gender reveal announcement.

Adam Barrell of The StoryLab Perth put it this way:

Facebook used to be about sharing your whole life and connecting with friends. Now more than ever Facebook is used to engage with pages and publishers. People want to explore and find new things to read and engage with.

When I want to engage with friends and family I use messenger to share photos, articles and arrange catch ups.

Wasn’t Facebook meant to make the world more open? And now Zuck is telling us we’d much prefer seeing posts from friends and family the most?

Just make a Tab/filter that users can select to just see friend posts – don’t go changing the algorithm again.

Good point! Bit hard to connect the world, when people wont accept a friend request from people they don’t know…always too many degrees of separation!

And Jon Loomer (Facebook Ads Legend from Jon Loomer Digital) described it like so:

Not everyone uses Facebook the same way. I purposefully see more brand and publisher content in my news feed than posts from friends. That’s only partly because I’m an antisocial jerk. But it’s mainly because I care most about political and sports news.

That’s the stuff I actually want to see. I don’t comment on those posts. I don’t provide “long and thoughtful replies.” Will I stop seeing that content?

If I do, that would kind of suck. That would be bad for my Facebook experience.

Jon posted a long and very considered post this quote was taken from, you can read the full post here.

So why this change?

Facebook has been trying to prompt us, as users – not publishers, to post more original content since this has been declining. Also it’s no secret the kids don’t think Facebook is cool…PLUS they’re running out of ad space.

Facebook knows it needs to tread a very fine line between showing you what you like organically and what advertisers might think you like. This is why better targeted ads with higher relevance scores perform better. As users we accept there’s ads, we just don’t wanna see ads for things we’re not interested in.

In theory this change prompts less but deeper connections to the people we’re friends with, with less page posts cluttering it up, and would help achieve Facebook’s goal of making us feel better mental health wise than passively (maybe obsessively) scrolling our newsfeeds. We’ve all had one friend say they felt happier after quitting Facebook (or Social Media more generally) so essentially it’s a retention strategy.

Will it work?

IMO? No.

For the way this update appears to work (once it’s rolled out – again we don’t really know til it happens) would be based on the fact that people want to post more, or at least the same amount of original content they do now. Your newsfeed will always be full – so if your friends aren’t posting photos, live video, links, events etc then what will make up the rest of your feed?

Page posts and ads, right?

You probably already interact with the people you want to hear from, so their posts will get upweighted, but beyond that who are we going to see posts from? Old high school acquaintances? No thanks (no offence JFSHS class of ’96)

You can leave me with my newsfeed full of tech pages, recipe videos, and Social Media publishers thanks.

But what do you think?

Will this clear up your newsfeed for more friend action? Good or bad? If you’ve got some thoughts drop a comment, I’d love to know!

December 10, 2017December 10, 2017

Facebook Sound Collection | New Facebook Feature

Listen Up!

Facebook’s got a new featiure and not everyone has it yet – so I’m going to show it to you. Have you heard of Facebook Sound Collection? Neither had I, but I was doing to scheduling this morning and I stumbled across it in my page menu and decided to take a look.

It’s a library of sounds – both track and souns effects and you can download them to add to your content. Awesome!

I wondered if I was the first to discover it – so a quick Google search said that I was about a day behind – but none of the articles I read on Facebook Sound Collections had any screenshots of what it actually looked like.

Welcome to Facebook Sound Collection

Thanks Facebook! So polite, happy to be here 🙂

How do you get there?

In my page it’s under Publishing Tools, but there could be other ways to navigate straight there.

Then What?

You’ll notice it in the menu:

So what’s it got?

Sound Collection is literally a collection of sounds. It’s got 1,00 Tracks (I expect they’ll keep adding to it) in 24 Generes and 21 Moods. Then there’s also Sound Effects broken up into 17 Categories and lengths of between 2sec to 30sec+.

For some reason there’s more different zipper noises than you’d think were required…

Anyway as you can see above you can play the track or download it to your device.

But how is this useful?

Well if you’ve ever uploaded video and had it rejected by Facebook for the audio breaching copyright then Facebook Sound Collection is a good way to get around that as the tracks have been pre-approved.

Although many of us use Facebook with the sound off, anyone who’s ever consumed content knows that the right sound track can make all the difference. I’m seeing this new feature as another commitment by Facebook to removing the barriers of users to create high quality original video content.

Or is this just a play for Spotify’s business?

I guess we’ll see…

have you got Facebook Sound Collection yet? What do you think? Will you use it?

Want to read more?

Read Facebook’s announcement.

Endgadget’s post

Techcrunch’s post

March 26, 2017October 18, 2019

[Algo]Rhythm & Blues | A Guide to the Facebook Algorithm

[Algo]Rhythm & Blues – A Guide to the Facebook Algorithm

The Almighty Facebook Algorithm dictates what you see and what you don’t in your Facebook newsfeed. As a user this is a blessing. The content served to you is most likely what provides you with value and entertainment, keeping you on the platform for longer.

It’s another story if you’re managing a Facebook page.

“I don’t get it, this post only reached 100 people but 1000 like my page?”

Sound familiar?

Facebook has recently said that on average every time a user logs into Facebook, they could potentially be exposed to over 1,500 pieces of content from friends and pages.

That’s a lot of content!

Think about how many pages you liked back in the day that are in no way relevant to you now, or people from high school that you’re friends with, do you really want to see all of their baby photos? This is where the Facebook algorithm jumps in. It will only serve you around 300 content pieces of the 1,500 based on factors that Facebook determines are most important to you.

Facebook’s algorithm is constantly tweaked and updated but you won’t be left in the dark. Big changes are announced on the Newsroom blog and small tweaks are said to be made 2 to 3 times a week. Some changes are made based on Qualitative Feedback.

Facebook extensively surveys thousands of people to gain information on your everyday experience on the platform. You may have even seen this survey pop up in your newsfeed. It consists of rating different types of content from 1-5 based on how much you want to see them in your newsfeed. So next time Facebook asks if you want to give feedback, don’t ignore it – you can help shape a newsfeed you want to see!

So what can brands do?

If you’re scratching your head thinking how you’re going to ever get seen the ever-crowded newsfeed, you don’t have to leave it to chance, there are things you can do when to maximise your organic reach.

Engagement – Likes, comments, shares, reactions!

In 2014, TechCrunch interviewed Facebook News Feed Director of Product Management, Will Cathcart, who outlined a list of the most important factors determining newsfeed order:

-How popular (Liked, commented on, shared, etc.) are the post creator’s past posts

-How popular is this post with the people who have already seen it

-How popular have the post creator’s past posts been with this viewer

-Does the type of post (status update, photo, video, link) match what’s been popular with the viewer in the past

-How recently was the post published

Everything in this list has to do with quality content. In essence, the more engaging your content is for your desired audience, the more organic reach you will see. There are a few ways that Facebook measures your content in terms of engagement and value.

Content that produces likes, comments, shares, @ tagging friends will help improve reach. This also includes conversation between the page and user within the comments, which is why community management is such an important aspect of your social media strategy.

The introduction of reactions is another aspect in newsfeed ranking as Facebook now has a new way of categorising the content that you digest. Insights show you what type of reaction your content is inspiring and a user’s newsfeed will reflect the weighting of their reactions in their newsfeed. Reactions other than likes will carry more weight than simple likes alone.

via GIPHY

It’s not just about what you’re posting – but how you’re posting. The post type you use is just as important as the content itself.

For example, video posts featuring a video that has been directly uploaded to Facebook (not a YouTube link) with a great deal of views, a long average viewing duration, or if lots of users have unmuted, will be rewarded with higher organic reach.

With 360° video and Facebook Live, the video options are endless.

You’ll NEVER Believe What Facebook Post Will Get You No Engagement….number 7 will shock you.

While we’re talking about post types, clickbait is just about the worst thing you can do to your page. You may think a headline like the one above is eye catching, but Facebook knows it’s not genuine, and above all else will rank authentic stories higher in newsfeeds. Don’t do your brand a disservice, if you’re relying on these types of stories to get clicks you will see a big drop in your reach.

Facebook first and foremost is a platform for social networking; people want to see posts from friends and family over a promotional post from a business. Pages that focus content on promotional posts, be it for a sale, a product with no context or even if you’re reusing content from an ad, will be punished by the Facebook algorithm.

Think of your own newsfeed and how many times you have scrolled past a big SALE image because at the time you just don’t care about it? Conversation is key, so skip the sale and give your audience what they want – VALUE; to be entertained or educated.

Test and Refine

Facebook’s algorithm is constantly in flux, so what was working for you 3 months ago might not pull the same results for you today. This means you’ll need to test and refine what works with your page’s audience, and need to be on top of the changes that Facebook releases.

If you want more detail to leverage the best results for your page you can always get in touch with me here, or if you’ve had your own experience battling the Facebook algorithm, drop us a comment below!

August 31, 2016October 31, 2018

Facebook interests examined | Have you lost interest?

What on earth does Facebook know about me?

Why am I seeing these ads?

If you want to see what Facebook thinks your “interests” are you can have a look and edit them. You’ll have a good laugh at the things you apparently like!

Go to Settings > Ads > Ads based on my preferences > edit > visit ad preferences. Then they will all be neatly displayed in little boxes. You can hover and close the ones you aren’t actually interested in.

It can be a lengthy process – but very eye-opening! This is a great experiment to do on your profile to show you why interest targeting on Facebook can be so hit and miss. You’re must better off using custom audiences based on your website traffic or email databases!

This won’t mean you’ll see fewer FB ads, but it might mean the ones you do see are relevant to you! And let’s face it, we’ve all come to terms with the fact that there’s ads on Facebook. PLUS occasionally you’ll see an ad for a flight, concert, or something that you ARE interested in and you didn’t already know about. Ok, it’s infrequent – but it does happen.

What do you think? Did you find this useful? Is it time to update your interests on Facebook, I mean it’s more than 12 years old now – and if you’ve been on it since the beginning you might have changed a bit since then!

March 4, 2016October 31, 2018

NEW – Local Insights: Find out about the people nearby your business!

I have a new client page that just got access to insights (the tab at the top of your page where you can look at your stats, you need 30 likes to gain access) and noticed something new!

Local Insights!

How many people walk or drive past your business every day? What if you could find out more about who they are?

Well, now you can – thanks to Facebook!

New Local Insights

Here’s where you can find it what it looks like:

We posted recently that insights had been upgraded. But this is new again. Insights into the Facebook users in a radius of your page!

It’s been broken down into sections; Activity & Peak Hours, Demographic Info and Ad Performance so I’ll go through the information available set by step with some screen shots.

Firstly let’s get a closer look at the map! You can choose a radium of 50 or 150 meters from the address of your business page, so the data is hyper-local. You can choose data from a week, month or quarter to look at.

You can see who is the most popular demographic nearby and the busiest time for Facebook foot traffic to the area.

Activity & Peak Hours

With the People Nearby section you can look at hourly, weekly, and historical data plus view your page check-ins. And there’s no surprise there’s a prompt to create a Local Awareness ad here too.

Demographic Info

Learn more about the demographics of the people (on Facebook) who are in your local area. See their gender, age bracket and whether they are “local” or not to the area. Local is defined as living less than 200km away.

Ad Performance

As this feature was found on a new page, there’s not much here to really delve into. It can be assumed that this data will allow you to benchmark your Local Awareness campaigns by percentage and improve them with time and testing.

Why is this exciting?

Knowing more about the people in your business’ local area can help you make better results from your Social Media efforts. If you know which people are nearby and at what times you can create tailored hyper-local content to attract their attention. You would be able to promote a lunch special, a sale item or a happy hour, for example, to people already in the area at the time.

And if this didn’t get enough traction organically, you could use some advertising budget on expanding your local reach.

Not only can you create hyper-local time sensitive content for your markets, you may be able to make wider business decisions too! Say you are a local pizza store thinking about expanding to open for lunch, you could find out how many people are nearby during that period that fit your diner demographic. Very cool!

With the population becoming more mobile, as marketers we need ways tap into that. It’s less effective to target ads to people who live in the vicinity when you’re only open business hours, as most of them will be at work – being able to target people nearby as they walk past your door with a snappy sales message, a promotion or something that grabs their attention could be a game changer for your business.

Facebook understands this and has started adding features such as this one, which I’m sure will be expanded in the future!

What do you think about this addition to your insights? Would you be more likely to use Local Awareness ads on Facebook now?

Feel free to leave us a comment, or swing by our socials – and as always, if you would like help with setting up your own Local Awareness campaign don’t hesitate to get in touch.

April 25, 2015April 10, 2016

Know Your Enemy

Ok, so that’s a bit of dramatic title, we apologies for that – but we really want to stress to our readers that the more they know about the social media platforms they use for their businesses the better their efforts will work.

How can you create good posts, great content and awesome engagement if you don’t know how – or what the users (let’s call them people) are looking for?

To expand: How do you know how to promote your messages on Instagram if you don’t have an account and have never used it? How would you know what content people like, what types of interactions are commonplace, how often to post and what hashtags to use? We know there are loads of great tools out there to help us – but that doesn’t beat knowing.

PLUS you spend your precious time creating these posts – if you don’t make them count it can become a big drain!

So, where do we start?

[bctt tweet=”The Chameleon’s suggest that you have personal profiles on each of the platforms you use or intend to use for your business and suss them out!”]

Do you research and gain advice from the “big guys” like Social Media Examiner, Moz, and your favourite Thought Leaders in social so you stay up to date with trends and feature updates.

If it’s a new platform – maybe ask a millennial 😉

We’re going to start with a quick couple of things about Facebook, which will hopefully help you understand how you can improve your business page!

1) You have a Facebook email address

You have a facebook email address which is yourname@facebook.com and it’s how messaging works.

2) Saving Posts

You can save posts to read later!

Ever seen something in your newsfeed you wanted to read but couldn’t at the time you saw it? Well you can click on the right arrow of posts that contain links (and some others) and click “Save Link” to add it to your “Saved” listing on the left hand side of your timeline. One of our chameleon’s described it in detail here.

[bctt tweet=”Did you know you can save posts on Facebook to read later?”]

3) Interest Lists

have a particular interest or hobby you like to read about? Find all the best content on that subject in the one place with Interest Lists. Create a list and then add pages or people who have relevant content! This gives you a whole new newsfeed just of those accounts you added about what you’re interested in!

A great way to stay up to date in what you like – and an awesome way to curate content for your page.

[bctt tweet=” Find all the best content on that subject in the one place with Facebook Interest Lists!”]

4) See & Manage your Facebook Ad Settings

Ironically you can only get to this from an ad, and when you’re looking for one it’s harder to find them – the rest of the time they seem to be everywhere!

Find out why you get targeted by advertisers on Facebook in a blog post a chameleon wrote here.

5) See where you are logged in to Facebook

You can find out where your Facebook account is logged in – the location, operating system and whether it’s mobile or desktop. You might be surprised where you are logged in, the first time I did this there was an old phone listed that hadn’t worked for 3 years!

Go to Security>Where Your Logged In and check for yourself.

We recommend taking the time to familiarize yourself with your Facebook settings. This can help you become a better “user” of the platform, in turn helping you run your pages.

6) Graph Search

There have been many blog posts written on this subject – so we’re not going to cover it end to end in this one, but we probably will take another run at it at a later date.

Graph Search has been around for about 3 years – but you need to have your language selected as English US. This pains us as much as it might you – but it’s worth it as all updates from Facebook roll out to US users first! Graph Search means you can find all kinds of data about your friends, your page likers, and – well anything really! And they have now released this feature on mobile too.

This will be handy with your profile for finding “that post with the turkey recipe that Julie had around Christmas” or “That photo of Dad with the lawnmower” but this information can be incredibly powerful for brands.

Imagine you can search for which other pages are liked by people who like your page? You can! What about where they live, what they are interested in, where they go, how old they are? That too – the possibilities are endless!

Having this information can help you align your brand with other brands they love, help you post relevant and engaging content and teach you about what audiences your messages appeal to! You can use this info to determine if your online fans are the ones you were after and adjust your posting to suit if they aren’t – AND see whether your online fans are the same sort of people who love your brand in real life! Amazing, well worth leaving the “U” out of words like colour…

There’s some great article articles on Graph Search here for you – but stay tuned here too as we will definitely be going deeper into this one.

Facebook’s description

Social Media Examiner’s Blog Post

Moz Post

We hope that by better understanding the playing field you can gain insight into how your fans use social media and act more like a person than a branded self-promotion robot we often see, as no-one wants to follow those brands on social.

[bctt tweet=”Being good at social media is about being social after all!”]