I’ve written previously on Reporting on Facebook Reach, particularly at the Page Level. Another opportunity is to dive more deeply into Reach reporting at the Post Level.

This can be useful in many cases and allows us to more fully understand Facebook Post Reach.

Why You Need to Report on Facebook Post Reach

There are a couple of times in particular when reporting on post reach is useful…

1) When you want to consider organic results in your reporting for paid posts.

• Particularly relevant when you have a paid post or campaign that performs extremely well among paid content, as it can often become heavily served by Facebook’s system organically as a result.
• Without including organic results, you might be missing out on a great deal of performance data and insight.

2) When you are trying to identify particularly high performing posts — potentially for promoting them later — and you’d like to use Reach data as an indicator of post performance.

Facebook Post Reach Defined

First, let’s clarify reporting of organic and paid reach metrics.

• If a user sees the post as a paid placement (i.e. it has the “Sponsored” label in News Feed, for example), that user is included in the Paid Reach count.
• If a user sees the post as an organic placement (i.e. it came directly from the page into the News Feed without a “Sponsored” label), that user is included in the Organic Reach count.
• Importantly, if a user sees placements as both of these types, they are counted in each individual metric, but they are only counted once when the cumulative numbers are totaled for overall Reach.

Here’s how Facebook explains it on one of their help pages:

If your post reaches someone through both paid and organic distribution, they’re counted toward each. Keep in mind that the sum of organic and paid reach won’t always equal post reach. For example, if one person sees your post through both organic and paid distribution, they’ll be counted as 1 in organic reach, 1 in paid reach, and 1 in post reach.

This will likely make more sense in a bit once we get through some specific examples.

Accessing the Data: Post-Level Reporting

First, Facebook does have a method for accessing high-level data on Posts. You can review this simply by clicking on the Insights tab from the top of your page. Facebook may require you to log into Business Manager first if you have your page managed there.

You can either scroll down on the Insights panel or click on Posts from the left side. If you click Posts, you’ll see a list of recent posts, with high-level info:

For further detail, back from the main Insights panel, you can click the “Export Data” to the right:

You can then select to export Post Level data from this screen, by clicking the Post data option. You can adjust the date range, as well as adjust the data you choose to export. Facebook offers several options here to change the layout of the data you export.

I normally like to download all of the data in bulk, instead of running into a situation where I wished I had captured something and have to re-export. If you want to make a change to your selection, you can do so from here. You can also save a favorite layout so that you don’t have to rebuild it in the future.

Post-Level Data vs. Ads Manager

One thing to note is that you will often find somewhat different results from this report, compared to what you would see when viewing similar data in Ads Manager. I’ve seen some indication that this could be due to different estimation models between the data sources, but it can also be impacted when you have additional placements for your ads (such as if you use a Facebook post as the ad material to publish on Instagram or in Instant Articles).

Post-Level data should only be showing you results from your post appearing on News Feed and on your Facebook Page (viewed when users visit your page directly).

Now that we have the data exported, we get to the fun part.

First, you should notice the various tabs across the bottom of your exported file. Though there are fewer options than at the Page Level, there is some potentially valuable data in these. We’ll get to some of this in a bit.

Comparing Paid, Organic, and Total Results for Facebook Post Reach

Going back to our earlier definition of Total Reach vs. Organic Reach or Paid Reach, you should see that if you attempt to add together your Organic and Paid Reach values for a specific row, the total is (almost) always more than the value indicates in Total Reach, at least in cases where you had any paid support for your post. It may look something like this:

*Facebook reports columns I, J, and K in the Post-Level export. In this example, I’ve included L as a calculation of adding J and K together. Column M is L minus I, which is explained more below.

We discussed earlier that the Total Reach metric will not double-count an individual that is reached by both Paid and Organic placements. When some users are reached by both Paid and Organic placements, our numbers can be thrown off. Calculating specific, post-level frequency can be a bit tough (some would say technically impossible).

However, we can evaluate how many people were reached by both Paid and Organic posts by using this data. Essentially, it should just be the difference between our manual calculation and the Total Post Reach number Facebook provided.

In our hypothetical example above, for the post on July 14th, we would do the following: Organic Reach PLUS Paid Reach = Manually Calculated Total Reach, or 2027 + 112,841 = 114,868. The difference between this number and the Facebook Reported Total Reach is our overlap, so 114,868 – 114,539 = 329 people who were reached by both organic and paid placements of the post in question.

Would you want to do this manual calculation breakout? I don’t see much of a reason, but you could use this method if needed.

Reporting Impressions is not as problematic, much like Page-Level reporting. Facebook separates Paid Impressions and Organic Impressions accordingly, and these require no de-duplication or manual re-calculation. You should see that simply adding these numbers together will equal the Total Impressions reported metric. This makes for easier reporting.

Breaking Out Facebook Post Reach Results: Fans vs. Non-Fans

Another under-utilized, interesting metric available from Post-Level data gives us the ability to understand what portion of reach was comprised of page fans vs. people who are not fans. Some might think of these as your “not-yet fans.”

If you navigate toward the right in the exported file from earlier, you’ll find a metric called “Lifetime Post Reach by People Who Like Your Page.” This simply means Lifetime Post Fan Reach.

If you subtract this value from the Total Reach, you have a measure of non-fan reach.

You can use this to estimate how much of your content is reaching fans vs non-fans, which could have interesting implications on ad targeting and investment. Normally, you will see that your paid posts reach a much higher percentage of non-fans vs. fans.

You should also find that organic-only posts reach many more fans than non-fans. However, there are exceptions — especially when a post is shared heavily.

Though this makes intuitive sense, some advertisers might be surprised by these findings.

Here’s a sample calculation to illustrate how you can do this:

*Facebook includes columns I and U in the Post-Level export. I’ve included V, W, and X as calculated fields.

Unpublished Posts: Organic Reporting Challenges

You’ve likely heard of “dark posts” or unpublished posts. These are basically just posts that never appear directly on the Facebook page used to publish ads (except for those appearing on the Info and Ads tab as part of Facebook’s transparency work).

The challenge with these posts is that they also do not appear in Post Level exports from your Facebook page. This means that we are unable to utilize the exported data to do the fun analyses of separating out paid vs. organic results, fans vs. non-fans, etc.

Sometimes, in the case of particularly strong posts that create a great deal of engagement, missing out on this organic reporting can be a big deal. You may have posts that deliver a much larger amount of organic results vs. paid, even in cases where the paid results are robust.

If it’s particularly important to ensure you capture organic data, there is a small, somewhat manual workaround to this.

First, we go to Ads Manager or Business Manager. Then we select the drop down from the top left, and select Page Posts, under the Create and Manage option.

Once selected, you can specify the page you’d like to review post data for.

Though it can take some patience to navigate, you can select to see all Ads Posts. You can then individually explore and review post results.

From the main screen of Page Posts, you’ll see metrics for topline Reach, Engagement, and “People Talking About This.”

If it’s a video post, you can select to open the post and then see an indication of results.

If you hover over the Reach bar on the bottom left, you’ll see a breakout of data for Organic vs. Paid performance.

Note: You can get to the same data from within Ads Manager if you select the Preview Arrow and then open the Post from the link…

When your post is NOT a video, unfortunately, there’s not a straightforward way to break out the organic results for unpublished posts (at least not yet that I’m aware of!). However, the Page Posts tool would at least show you the top-level reach results.

You could spot check this against your Ads Manager reach data. If the number shown on the Ads Post in the Page Posts tool is vastly larger than the reach number reflected in Ads Manager, then you know you might have a particularly strong organic performer on your hands. Congrats!

One bright spot: Page-Level reporting DOES include data on unpublished posts, though it is not broken out for each post. You can see a write-up on that topic here.

What Does All This Mean?

1. Total Post Reach is not simply the sum of Organic Reach and Paid Reach.
2. You can separate and analyze performance of posts for Fans vs. Non-fans, which may provide interesting insights.
3. Capturing Organic performance data on Unpublished Page Posts is possible in many cases, though this data can be limited.

Your Turn

Do you use Post-Level Reporting? Do you have any particular challenges with comparing performance data from Ads vs your Organic results?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Post Reach: Post-Level Reporting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I noticed something a little different in my News Feed yesterday…

I had two immediate thoughts when I saw this:

1. Wow, that’s kinda cool; and
2. People are gonna FREAK!

People freaking on Facebook is nothing new. That’s how they roll. But this makes for the perfect freak-out combination: 1) Advertising, 2) No Connections, and 3) News Feed.

First of all, yes. I just used two numbered lists in two different ways in the span of consecutive sections. Numbers are awesome.

Second, yes. I’m serious. No connection necessary.

Up until now, a brand could enter your News Feed in three ways (numbered list alert!):

1. Organic post, because you are a Fan;
2. Friend interaction, because they are a Fan; or
3. Promoted Post, because you or a friend are a Fan.

In each case, there was a connection — either first or second degree. Even if you weren’t a Fan, there was some level of familiarity because you would be told that Friend X was a Fan.

Now? As you can see from the Suggested Post above, there is no given connection whatsoever.

This is essentially a melding of a sidebar Page Post Ad and a Promoted Post. In each case, you are promoting an actual post from your Page.

But as is the case with a Page Post Ad, you can target anyone with it. And as is the case with Promoted Posts, it can go in the News Feed.

Of course, the extra kicker to this is the “Suggested Post” wording and the “Like Page” button. This could be a major addition to the Facebook marketing toolbox when it comes to Page growth.

But do not underestimate the potential backlash or the impact said backlash could make.

If people report your sidebar ads or hide them, no big deal. They just won’t see them anymore.

But with these ads, they can voice their displeasure right on your post. For all of your current Fans to see. Intermingling with Fan comments about how awesome you are, there’s the significant potential of “YOU SUCK!” comments.

Sure, this was possible with Promoted Posts before, and is apparently the source of backlash already (though this may actually be directed towards usage of Suggested Posts or a combination of the two ad types). But I wouldn’t expect users to hold back one bit when confronted with brands in their News Feeds that not even friends are connected to.

Here’s the big problem, outside of the damage control you may need to take care of on your posts: Spam complaints negatively impact EdgeRank.

In other words, Facebook takes cues about how interesting or spammy you are from its users. If you’re reported regularly, Facebook considers this in their algorithm. We can assume (how much, it’s not clear) that the more spam reports you get the fewer people you will reach.

[Start the endless cycle of increasingly ineffective promotion…]

I can already tell you that posts I promote to Fans result in more negative feedback. I can only imagine how much more negative feedback would result if I target non-Fans who aren’t even friends of Fans.

So this is not something to take lightly. Feel free to experiment, but do so very carefully.

Here is my recommendation…

1) Budget Low

I’d always advise that you set a low budget when you experiment. This is a prime example for why you want to do that. The less you spend, the less damage if something goes horribly wrong.

2) Monitor Closely

3) Target Tightly

4) Showcase Your Best

High Risk, High Reward

Such an ad is not for amateurs. You need to plan this out properly and professionally. If you screw it up, screw up quietly.

What do you think? Is this something you will try?

The post Facebook Suggested Posts: A New Killer Tool? Users Hold the Cards appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[This is a two-part series. The first part focused on the issue of spam impacting Promoted Posts. Part 2 focuses on the solution.]

Yesterday, I was a bit of a Facebook Promoted Posts buzz kill. While the reported results have been excellent, I’m seeing more and more spam. Not only that, but the budget I’m allocating towards Fans only is actually being spent mostly on non-Fans.

It’s a bleak picture. So, Promoted Posts are completely worthless, right?

Not really. It’s a loaded question with a loaded answer. But there’s also a very pleasant solution.

Before we get to that, I need to explain something…

A Promoted Post is Not an Ad Unit

There’s a misconception that Facebook Promoted Posts provide an opportunity to Facebook marketers that was previously not available. In reality, it’s only the packaging that’s new.

A Promoted Post is a Facebook campaign consisting of two (or three) ads: One (or two) Page Post Ads that appear in the News Feeds of Fans (and possibly friends of Fans) and a Sponsored Story.

What Facebook did was make it extremely easy for you to create that campaign. Previously, you would have had to go into Facebook Power Editor (which is clunky and difficult to use) to create this campaign because ads that show up only in News Feeds can’t be initiated from the Facebook Ads Manager.

Now, Facebook packages these three ads together and says, “Here. We’ll create these for you. Just click one button.”

The result is convenience. But not necessarily what you want.

Facebook doesn’t allow you to edit these campaigns. You get what you get. They throw in the Sponsored Story to reach more people and add perceived value.

It’s like spending $10 on a car wash and getting a free tire. You didn’t want that tire, but thanks.

In the case of a Promoted Post, the tire I didn’t want consists of the following:

• Optimized CPM Bidding
• Non-Fan Targeting
• Fixed Geo Targeting

Promoted Posts are extremely efficient on the surface, but they’d be a heck of a lot better if I could eliminate the spam and focus entirely on Fans.

The truth is that you can.

You could create an ad entirely from scratch to do this. Like I said, it’s just like creating a Page Post Ad in Power Editor that only goes into News Feeds.

But we can actually leverage the Promoted Post that was created and work with it to make it awesome. There are several ways that you can do this:

1. Delete the Sponsored Story
2. Duplicate the Promoted Post and Change Bidding to CPM
3. Duplicate the Promoted Post and Change Geo Targeting

1. Delete the Sponsored Story

This may be the only step you need to take to make your Promoted Post infinitely more effective.

As discussed yesterday, most Pages do not have enough fans to run up a bill of more than a few dollars when targeting their Fans only. If you reach 2,000 Fans with an ad that has a CPM of $1.00, you’ll spend $2.

This is why, presumably, Facebook tacks on the Sponsored Story. You tell Facebook you want to spend $30 to promoted your post. Facebook knows there’s no way that you can spend that much in three days by targeting only your Fans. So the budget is moved more and more towards non-Fans.

You’ll notice this is the case more as you spend more. Budget goes up, so does spam.

Instead, I encourage you to keep the budget low and focus entirely on Fans. You do that by deleting the Sponsored Story.

Immediately after creating your Promoted Post, go into your Facebook Ads Manager and find this new campaign.

Click on it. You’ll then get a view of all of the ads that make up your campaign. If you chose the Promoted Post that targets only Fans, there will be two ads. Otherwise, there will be three…

The Sponsored Story is the ad that you do not want. It’s the ad that targets anyone who is the friend or subscriber of someone who interacts with your content. On the surface, that may sound great. But combined with Optimized CPM, this leads to bots and spam.

I covered this yesterday, but the reason is simple. When using Optimized CPM, Facebook targets your ads at people most likely to perform a desired action. That often ends up being bots. If your Page is relatively free of bots, targeting them won’t be a problem. But outside of your Page’s Fans is the Wild West.

So, we want to stop or remove that Sponsored Story so that we can do what we wanted to do in the first place: Promote our post to our Fans.

The problem, of course, is that Promoted Posts are extremely rigid. There is very little editing that you can do. You can’t even pause individual ads.

But what you can do, though, is delete an ad.

Now the only ad that will be running is the ad promoting your post in the News Feeds of Fans.

2. Change Bidding to CPM

Just by completing step 1, you’ll make your promotion infinitely more effective and efficient. But maybe you actually want to keep the Sponsored Story. Or maybe you want to delete the Sponsored Story, but you want to curb the bot problem you have with your own Fans.

You can do this by changing the bidding from Optimized CPM to CPM.

As I’ve mentioned before, Optimized CPM is a major source of the problem with Facebook ads. While they seem great in theory, they inevitably target bots and undesirable accounts because those accounts perform actions more often than most humans.

The problem, though, is that Facebook doesn’t allow you to edit this within a Promoted Post. It’s automatically set up as Optimized CPM. And even if you attempt to edit it in Power Editor, you’ll be shot an error.

The solution: Duplicate the ad and recreate it, but with CPM.

Within Power Editor, filter to view only Active Campaigns. Find your campaign, click on it and click the Ads menu item.

Then find the ad that you want to edit, select it and click Duplicate.

Now you’ll need to edit the name of this duplicated ad. If you don’t, Facebook will think it is another Promoted Post and you’ll be given an error when you try to upload it. Change it to something like “Fans Only CPM.” Just make sure it isn’t “Promoting…” or in a similar format as the original.

Now you have this duplicate ad. Click on it and then select Pricing & Status. Change it to CPM and set a bid.

When you’re done, go ahead and upload it. Note that you will probably get an error. As long as it’s for only one ad, that error is for the original ad you clicked on. Just go into the Facebook Ad Manager to confirm the new ad is there, and your change was a success.

3. Change Geo Targeting

Bots appear to be concentrated in specific countries. That aside, maybe your business is only relevant in particular locations. You’ll want to limit the geographic targeting of these ads.

Do what you did in step 2, but this time click Audience instead of Pricing & Status. Your ad is targeted at every country that is represented by your current Fans.

Simply “X” out the countries that you don’t want to target. When you’re done, click Upload.

Note: The more countries you eliminate, the smaller your potential audience and less likely that Facebook will run your ad. So for Pages with smaller audiences, you may need to bite the bullet on geo targeting.

The Drawback

There is one drawback of deleting ads generated by a Promoted Post: You’ll no longer get the Facebook Insights within the associated post. Those stats are still available within the Facebook Ad Manager of course, but you’ll lose that convenience.

If you delete the Sponsored Story and keep the other ad, you’ll get an error because Facebook will be confused by the missing Sponsored Story. But you should get the associated Facebook Insights within the post.

In Conclusion

Still need help? Watch the video at the top!

The post Facebook Promoted Posts: The Solution to the Spam Problem [Part 2] appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Little known secret alert!! Watch the video or read below for more info…

One of my favorite Facebook marketing tools is the Promoted Post. I can set up a campaign easily without leaving my Page, it doesn’t cost much to make a significant impact and the content is promoted within News Feeds and mobile devices instead of on the sidebar.

On the surface, though, Promoted Posts appear to be limited. Here are a few of the rules you may be aware of:

• Only posts under three days old are eligible for promotion
• Only specific budget options are given
• Once you set a budget, it can’t be changed from your Page

Guess what? I’m going to tell you how to get around these restrictions.

The Little Known Secret

Here’s the thing that you need to understand: Facebook Promoted Posts are nothing more than glorified Page Post Ads. Facebook simply streamlines the process, taking away some of the options and controls in the process, to make advertising easier.

But you could completely recreate everything you did by creating a Promoted Post from within Power Editor (you can’t create a News Feed or Mobile ad within the Facebook Ad Manager). And once you’ve created the Promoted Post, you can edit the ad as you would any other ad within your Facebook Ad Manager.

The Promoted Post

As you can see, I’ve already started promotion for $15, and I am only allowed to change the amount to $10. My other option would be to pause or stop the campaign when it hits an amount I prefer.

But what if the promotion does really well? How do I raise the budget to $22 or even extend the promotion beyond the three-day window?

The Solution

All you have to do is edit the budget like you would any other ad. You can even change the date to go beyond the three-day limit of promotion.

Once you go back to your Page, you’ll notice that the budget is reflected accordingly:

Pretty cool, right? The thing is, you could do all kinds of editing of this ad now if you really wanted to get messy. You could change the targeting, too. It’s just any other ad!

I hope you find this tip useful! Did you know that you could edit a Promoted Post after it’s been created?

The post How to Change the Budget of a Facebook Promoted Post appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

In a previous blog post, I wrote about the benefits of using Facebook Power Editor. If you aren’t using Power Editor or a third party application that utilizes the Facebook advertising API, you don’t have access to several great features, including advertising on mobile devices.

Today I’m going to get into the details of installing and using Power Editor.

What Is Power Editor?

Power Editor is a free tool that replaces and enhances the capabilities of the Bulk Uploader. Power Editor makes it easy to create, edit and manage ads and campaigns in bulk, even across a large number of different ad accounts.

Install Power Editor

Once installed, you can access Power Editor by going to https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor.

Use Power Editor

Once you install Power Editor, you’ll be asked which accounts you’d like to download into the tool. My guess is that you’ll want access to all of the ads you created previously, so you’ll select “all.”

Now you’ll have access to every campaign and ad that you’ve created.

Virtually everything that is available on Facebook.com/ads/manage will be available here, plus some additional features.

1) View Stats
When you’re viewing individual ads, the final columns will display key stats for those ads. If you want to view more stats, simply click Options and then Settings at the top right to select other columns.

2) Create a New Campaign
When viewing campaigns (click on the left), click Create Campaign at the top. An “Untitled” campaign will then populate on the left. Click it to begin to fill in the details (those details will go into the bottom panel).

3) Create a New Ad
When you’re within a campaign, click Ads at the top and then Create Ad. Once again, fill in all of the details in the main panel on the bottom.

4) Bulk Update Campaigns or Ads
If you want to edit multiple campaigns or ads at once, simply select the ones you want (with a Mac, you use the Command or Shift keys) and start editing in the bottom panel. These changes will apply to all campaigns or ads that you are editing.

5) Don’t Forget to Upload and Download!
The Power Editor is definitely not perfect. When you make changes outside of the Power Editor, you’ll need to make sure to click Download. When you have created or edited campaigns or ads within Power Editor, you’ll need to click Upload before they will take effect. These buttons are at the top right.

6) Access to Other Features
As mentioned before, you also have access to the following features when using Power Editor or the Facebook advertising API:

• Create an ad that appears within News Feeds (other than Promoted Posts)
• Create an ad that appears on mobile devices
• Create ads that use CPM, but not Optimized CPM

If you are currently advertising with the regular old Facebook.com interface, you have no idea what I’m talking about.

Final Notes

But in the end, if you want to access some great features that you may have been missing, Power Editor is definitely worth checking out.

Have you tried out Power Editor? Let me know your thoughts below!

The post How to Use Facebook Power Editor appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.