Facebook went down today, along with Instagram and Whatsapp. It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.

It attracted the predictable rush of posts on Twitter and LinkedIn about how you shouldn’t rely too heavily on one platform. That you shouldn’t build your house on rented land. (Irony alert about posting this stuff on other platforms, of course).

I saw myself in some of those warnings. I’ve made them. I still believe it idealistically.

But it got me thinking about the insane disruption that was occurring to businesses around the world today. I consider myself lucky that this was only a normal day for me, not one I’ve had circled on the calendar as a pivotal point in my business.

Scheduled posts and planned announcements were disrupted. You had plans. Your business has numbers to hit. Facebook drives traffic and revenue that you rely on. Stopped.

Customer support was disrupted. This is how people communicate now. They want to chat. They use your Messenger integration. They go to your Facebook page or Instagram account. They wanted answers. You couldn’t provide them.

Facebook ads to promote a client’s product were put on pause. You may be spending $10 or $100,000 per day. You spend that budget for a reason. Now, nothing.

This may have been an important day for a business. Building to this moment. I see myself in the position some of these businesses may have been today. I can only imagine the frustration if this were an important day.

And now… White screen.

Look, I’m one of the first to talk about not relying too heavily on a single platform. You shouldn’t have a business that’s built entirely inside of Facebook and relies only on Facebook. That gives Facebook far too much power. And you know that if Facebook ever goes down, like today, you’re screwed.

That’s the extreme of reliance on others. The extreme of business carelessness.

But, does today truly tell us we shouldn’t rely on other platforms? That we should own and control it all? How realistic is that??

Let’s be clear: We as a business community rely heavily on Facebook. But it’s not just Facebook. And we all rely on many things we don’t own.

You want to limit that reliance as much as possible. We don’t control what Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or TikTok do. Whether it’s staying online or changing their business model.

But…

But even if you run your business entirely through your own website and email list, you rely on things you don’t own. You rely on web hosting to keep your website up. You rely on the CRM to function when messaging your customers. You rely on the electricity and phones to work. You rely on the WiFi so that you can do… just about anything.

I rely on so many pieces of software running right now on my computer to run effectively, as I expect it to. If it doesn’t, my business is disrupted.

And you need Facebook, Twitter, and the many platforms that exist to work so that you can reach your customers in a wide variety of ways. We are all so reliant on others. It’s impossible to isolate business to what we fully own and control only.

And that, I guess, is the scary (and maybe beautiful?) part of business and life. We ultimately rely heavily on the support and operations of many, many others within our network to function.

It’s all sorta “ha ha ha very funny” to point at Facebook and laugh right now. But this just makes me think about those times when I’m giving a webinar and the internet goes out. Or sending an email to announce a product and the link doesn’t work. Or my website crashes because I didn’t pay enough for hosting.

Or any of the endless possibilities of things, software, and people that don’t work as I expect and business gets disrupted.

When it comes down to it, we lack basic control. We are at the mercy of so many different services, software, and people to execute on what we are trying to accomplish every day.

Should you own as much as you can and control as much as you can? Sure. But ultimately, you can’t run from the ultimate reliance on so many people, services, and things that can make everything stop at any moment.

That doesn’t make this chaos. There’s order. We all make strategic decisions about the software, services, and platforms we use. There are inherent risks in all of them. We mitigate those risks the best we can. We control what we can.

Beyond that, let it be. Throw up your hands. Go for a walk. Read a book. Drink a beer. It’s out of your control.

Embrace the chaos.

The post The Day Facebook Broke appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If Facebook is right, we’re in the process of entering a very different online world. Privacy as the goal, advertising will suddenly seem very “different” to users. Will they like what they see?

When the iOS 14 ATT prompt rolls out to all users in “early Spring,” they will be given two options: 1) Allow the app to track your activity across apps and websites to provide personalized advertising or 2) Don’t allow tracking. This prompt, most importantly for Facebook advertisers who run ads for mobile web, will be shown for Facebook and Instagram app users.

Of course, this isn’t just about iOS 14. This is a trend. We’re entering a less personalized world.

If ads are less personalized, they will be less relevant. If they are less relevant, they’re less likely to be effective. According to Facebook:

Our studies show, without personalized ads powered by their own data, small businesses could see a cut of over 60% of website sales from ads.

To non-advertisers, this quote means nothing. Why should you care whether advertisers are profitable?

The Future of Privacy-Altered Advertising

We’re entering a world of greater online privacy, where pixels and tracking become less effective. Without tracking, an advertising platform like Facebook knows less about you. They don’t know the websites you visit or the products you buy.

To some, that would be a good thing.

Tracking allows businesses to reach people who have visited their website or expressed interest in specific products. It allows advertisers to show ads to people that they may actually want to see. Ads that solve problems or answer questions they’ve had.

By removing tracking, you can expect to see fewer of these relevant ads.

You Click on Ads

Like it or not, ads are a part of your Facebook news feed experience. At their best, well-targeted ads can add to your experience. At their worst, poorly-targeted ads will take away.

Ideally, ads will show up at just the right time. You were just searching for this solution. Or it features a topic that you’re passionate about. You click, and maybe you don’t even realize that it was an ad.

I know, I know. The claim has always been “I never click on Facebook ads.” You’re a freaking liar.

I click on ads, and it’s not because I’m an advertiser trying to make a point. The reality is that even I’m not completely aware of how often I’m clicking them.

But you can find this information in Recent Ad Activity, which is in the bookmarks sidebar of Facebook’s mobile app and desktop site. Here, you’ll see the ads you’ve engaged with during the past three months.

I’ve engaged with 54 ads during that time. Granted, I didn’t engage to buy in all cases. Sometimes, I was simply curious about the comments. There are a few I simply don’t remember.

But there absolutely are products I bought from ads in that list. Others I was interested in that I wouldn’t have considered without seeing those ads.

You Will Still See Ads

When people complain about ads, they seem to think that an ad-less utopia is a possibility. If you opt-out of tracking, you are still going to see ads.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, more than $27 Billion of Facebook’s total $28 Billion in revenue came from advertising. This is how Facebook makes money. This is why you can use Facebook for “free.”

The ads aren’t going anywhere. In fact, the ads may start becoming more noticeable as they become less relevant and more annoying. You may even swear you’re seeing more.

Instead, it’s just that those ads are more likely to suck.

What Will Users Do?

So, this is where it will get interesting. You may see an ad once every 3-5 posts in your news feed (I just performed a very unscientific experiment and found that to be the case for me). That’s a pretty juicy percentage of your experience.

If those ads are relevant — particularly if they reflect sources you already consume on a regular basis — you may hardly notice them. But if they aren’t relevant, your experience will be negatively impacted.

It’s not that you need ads to improve your experience on Facebook. But you do need good ads that don’t take away from your experience.

Will users notice this change? How will they react? Can we presume that they will act less often on ads? Will they complain more about the ads? Will they make the connection that this is due to a lack of tracking and personalization?

And the primary question: Will they use Facebook less often as a result?

Again, the chunk of content that is actually promoted is not trivial. This contributes significantly to your experience, whether we like it or not.

An Advertiser’s Perspective

It’s really easy to ignore an advertiser’s perspective related to online privacy. I totally understand that.

But, I also think there’s a basic misunderstanding of what an advertiser does and has access to.

If you allow tracking, there’s not some evil advertiser scrolling through a list of people to target who has visited their and other similar websites. They aren’t picking you out by name and looking at your embarrassing browsing habits.

Maybe this is a strawman. But I get the sense that some people think this way (maybe the definition of a strawman). It’s just not that sophisticated.

As a publisher, I have the Facebook pixel code on my website. Facebook is able to anonymously connect visitors to my site to users on Facebook. That way, I can create highly targeted ads based on the pages you visited, things you bought, and other activities.

But, I never see who did any of that. To be honest, I don’t care. I just want to reach the people who are likely to respond to my ads.

As an advertiser, maybe I’ve become numb to it. But, I see the value in targeted ads — not just as an advertiser, but as a user. I want to see ads that are relevant to me. I don’t want to see garbage that has nothing to do with me.

Maybe you don’t trust Facebook, and that truly is understandable. But I hope that users understand what the advertiser’s role actually is in this process.

Jumping in a Time Machine

The future of online advertising may actually look a whole lot like the past. Less relevant. Less personalized. More annoying.

Of course, advertisers will need to adjust to remain profitable. Facebook will need to evolve to maintain their revenue growth. Other companies may see an opportunity to fill a need and develop solutions.

Still, it’s going to be more difficult to create highly relevant ads — or, more accurately, to create ads that we can confidently say will be of interest to our audience.

It’s going to be like 10 years ago. Not the good part of 10 years ago when everyone loved Facebook and it was fresh and awesome and exciting. I’m talking about all of the crappy ads we saw that we wished would go away.

From a user’s perspective, that future is disappointing. From an advertiser’s perspective, it’s a bit scary. It means we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done. Most importantly, we can’t do things like we did 10 years ago.

And that is a topic for another day…

VIDEO

I did something different and recorded a version of this blog post as both a Pubcast episode and a video. Let me know if it’s something you want me to continue!

Your Turn

What are your thoughts on the future of online advertising and how users will react to it? Do they realize what they are inviting?

Let me know in the comments below?

The post These Ads Suck: Will Users in a Privacy-Altered World Like What They See? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Remarketing, or targeting people who recently visited your website with Facebook ads, is effective due to relevancy. One of the many ways you can increase this relevancy is by targeting those who spent the most time on your website.

Let’s walk through how to create those audiences here.

How to Create

Go to Audiences within the Business Tools menu.

Click “Create Audience” and select “Custom Audience.”

Select “Website” as your source.

It will look like this…

Click the drop-down menu the defaults to “All Website Visitors” and select “Visitors by Time Spent”…

You can create an audience of your top 5%, 10%, or 25% visitors in terms of time spent on your website.

If you want, you can further filter by pages visited. One example of why you might use this is if you have the same pixel on multiple domains.

While this approach is great for isolating valuable visitors, know that it’s also slicing your audience into a much smaller fraction. It may not be ideal for websites with light traffic. Or you may simply want to use a longer duration and lower budget.

A theoretical example of how this works:

Your website gets 100,000 visitors during the past 30 days. Those visitors are listed (hypothetically) in order of time spent on your website. So the first person has spent the most time on your website during those 30 days. We’ll say they spent 10 hours. The last person spent the least amount of time. We’ll say they spent one second.

To create an audience of the top 25% of active users on your website, Facebook takes the top 25,000 in this case.

How to Use Them

When creating these audiences, they will appear on the Audiences page along with other Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, and Saved Audiences.

You can then target or exclude this audience when editing the audience while creating an ad set.

The Benefits of These Audiences

This is a really good way to isolate high-quality website visitors. Understand that your entire pool of visitors includes the good and the bad. So, when you create an audience of all visitors, it includes people who spent a couple of seconds on your site along with those who spent hours. We want to focus on those who spent hours.

There are many potential use cases. You can target this audience for driving traffic to a new blog post, promoting a list-builder, or selling a product. It’s simply one more tool for your targeting toolbox.

Your Turn

What do you think of these audiences? How do you use themm?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create an Audience of People Who Spent the Most Time on Your Website appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you want to know how many conversions were driven by an ad, Facebook is very good about helping you uncover that information. They are eager to show how responsible the ad was for your impact.

Strangely, it’s a different story when it comes to organic distribution — whether it be of a purely organic post of an otherwise paid ad. This is a huge missed opportunity.

We scraped the top of this recently in a post about Facebook Lead Ads and organic distribution. Make sure you read that post.

Today we’ll talk more about conversions from organic distribution, the ways you can track it, and how it ultimately impacts our actions as marketers.

1. Facebook Ads and Organic Distribution

A little-known secret: Ads Manager isn’t giving you all of the data.

If your ad is particularly effective, there will be a viral component. Those you target will comment, like, and share your ad. As a result, their friends and followers will have the opportunity to see your ad, too, even though you didn’t pay to reach them.

And if you didn’t pay to reach this new viral audience, guess what? Ads Manager doesn’t report on it. It only reports on paid distribution.

The problem is that most brands and advertisers completely forget about this. When we measure the effectiveness of an ad, we only look at Ads Manager. But there is the potential for a completely different story that is left untold.

If the ad lacks virality, the difference in this impact will be minimal. But for other cases, you may be grossly underestimating the impact of your ads.

The result: We think an ad isn’t performing well, so we turn it off. Meanwhile, it was driving more conversions than we knew.

2. Organic Posts and Conversions

Here is the really weird thing: Facebook does everything it can to show that your ads were effective (related to your paid distribution). Some would argue that Facebook’s attribution model (7 days after a click, 1 day after a view) takes too much credit for conversions at times.

And yet, Facebook makes no attempt whatsoever to show the conversions you generate with an organic post.

Here’s an example of the metrics that Facebook provides for a post I published that was never promoted as an ad. It only has organic distribution…

This is not, on the surface, a particularly impactful post. It only reached about 3.5% of my potential audience. It didn’t get much engagement. Facebook only reported on 133 link clicks.

These types of numbers are why I rarely share promotional content to my page, instead reserving that content for ads only.

But, guess what? This pedestrian post drove more than 100 leads, according to Google Analytics…

The numbers Facebook provided made me feel like the post was a waste of time. And yet, it generated 116 completely free leads. Particularly during these high competition times, I could easily spend more than $200 for those results.

And that’s from a poorly performing post!

3. Tracking Conversions with UTM Parameters

If you’re wondering how I determined that post generated 116 leads, it’s because I used UTM parameters. In other words, I altered the end of my URL so that Google Analytics could track my traffic and report on those who arrived on my website from that specific link.

You can create your own with the Google URL Builder (or freehand if you’re a pro).

When you use that new URL, find out the results within the “Campaigns” section of Google Analytics.

4. Conversion Attribution Consistency

Of course, you shouldn’t have to go through all of this to track the number of conversions coming from your organic post. Facebook should display it.

And one reason Facebook should display it is that this method is imperfect for one primary reason: attribution consistency.

As discussed earlier, Facebook reports a conversion when a targeted user clicks on your ad and converts within 7 days or views your ad without clicking and converts within a day. Facebook also tracks you across devices.

Google can’t do this. They have no idea if you saw an ad without clicking and later acted on it. We know that Facebook and Google Analytics will never match up. It’s not because one is trying to mislead you. They simply have access to different information.

As a result, the use of UTM parameters is merely a Band-Aid for uncovering the full picture when Facebook could easily provide this information.

5. Facebook Attribution Tool

Some of you may be ready to shout at me about the Facebook Attribution Tool. Yes, this tool can help you uncover how many conversions you get from both paid and organic efforts on Facebook.

But there are two primary issues with this that don’t solve our problem.

First, it displays both paid and organic conversions coming from Facebook, but it doesn’t separate those that weren’t the result of a post you shared. But this is a smaller issue.

The bigger issue is that these stats aren’t post-specific. You’ll get a sense of conversions driven from Facebook (organic and paid), as well as other sources, but you aren’t given information on the number of conversions driven organically by a specific post.

This is incredibly frustrating since we know that Facebook has this information. They’re just choosing not to show it.

6. The Disappearance of Organic Distribution Metrics

While doing the research for this post, there’s also been a change that impacts our ability to even see the basic organic distribution metrics associated with our ad.

When viewing a post published to my page from Facebook’s Pages mobile app, I’m able to see the difference in organic and paid distribution of that post (assuming I promoted it).

But what about the organic distribution of a post that only exists as an ad?

There was a time when you could go to the permalink of your ad, and Facebook would display organic and paid distribution — just as displayed above with a page post. This helped understand the viral impact of the ad, even if it didn’t help uncover organic conversion information.

As far as I can tell, this is no longer the case…

Another place that previously helped display total reach, organic and paid, of an ad was the Page Posts section within Ads Manager. Well, whether it’s a bug or intentional, it now displays all zeros for me…

For whatever reason, Facebook now makes it insanely difficult to uncover any organic distribution information related to an ad.

7. Why Doesn’t Facebook Make This Easier?

So, let’s try to look at this from Facebook’s perspective. Why don’t they display this information?

The first explanation would be that it’s not possible. But that would seem unlikely, particularly for those page admins who are already using the Facebook pixel. What’s so different about a paid post and organic post that allows Facebook to report on paid, but not organic, conversions? The organic post itself has every other metric.

And since Facebook provides the general organic conversion numbers within the Facebook Attribution Tool, I’m even more inclined to believe it’s possible.

I’m left to assume this is a business decision on the part of Facebook. What is the danger of displaying this information? Let’s think about it…

Facebook’s been criticized for putting such a focus on organic reach. Well, actually, I’d say that highlighting organic reach has resulted in complaints about not reaching more people. And the implied goal of highlighting that metric is to get people to spend money to reach more.

But, what if reach isn’t all that important after all? What if you’re getting a bunch of conversions from that organic post? A post that you otherwise presumed hadn’t been that effective?

In my case, I could have spent more than $200 to get the same impact of a poorly performing, strictly organic, post. That certainly made me think about my distribution of paid and organic efforts.

8. The Missed Opportunity

This all seems like a colossal missed opportunity. It really shouldn’t be that hard. Create a prompt that encourages the page admin to connect their pixel, if they haven’t already. Then report on organic conversions that happen as a result.

I don’t know if this would change behavior, leading marketers to spend more or less on ads. But I do know that it would provide a much clearer picture regarding the impact they are making.

Was this ad effective? Well, these are the numbers based on those I paid to reach, but…

Was this organic post effective? Well, these are the numbers based on how many people it reached and other basic metrics, but…

This is especially important for those running ads for others. It’s possible that these advertisers are currently missing a portion of their impact. A full picture may keep clients happy.

Show us the conversions, Facebook. Paid and organic. There’s really no excuse.

Watch Video

I also talked about this on the video below…

Your Turn

What are your thoughts on organic conversions?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook and the Mystery of Organic Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The death of blogging. The death of SEO. The death of Facebook organic reach. And now, the death of Instagram for brands.

First, let’s be incredibly clear: Any article title that declares the death of something (unless it’s the death of a someone), can’t be taken seriously. It’s an exaggeration. It’s click bait. And it’s intended to generate panic and discussion.

[YES, I realize the title of this post is a “Death of…” entry. Feel free to not take that title seriously.]

Declaring the “death of brands on Instagram” is quite possibly the easiest title ever written. You know that brands are worked up into a frenzy over organic reach on Facebook. You know that no matter how inaccurate the statement, many will be lined up in support of it.

While the statement is surely misleading, it also misses a very important point. A point that brands too easily miss because of their tunnel vision concern for themselves at this very moment.

By declaring the death of brands on Instagram, it shows a prioritization for the well-being of the brand while caring little for the user. Because, dammit, who cares about user experience? Who cares if engagement is dropping due to bad brand content? Who cares, as long as my brand gets seen as much as I think it deserves to be seen?

The customer is always right? We’re a lying bunch. We, as a group, don’t care about the customer. We don’t care about the user experience. We don’t care about our place within a social network. We care about making money right now.

Or that is at least implied by the steady flow of “death of…” article titles. In reality, these reactions reflect the actual problem we’re seeing right now: The death of brands that care about people.

[Tweet “The death of brands on Instagram? How about the death of brands that care about people?”]

The New Instagram Algorithm

On March 15, Instagram made the following announcement:

To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.

That’s the abbreviated version, of course. But the more complicated version is that Instagram wants to use an algorithm to get an idea of what you are most likely to engage with and show that first.

Keep in mind, this early algorithm is not the same as what orders our Facebook posts every day. At least for now, all of the posts that could be in your Instagram feed will still be there (as opposed to filtering out the best or the worst), they’ll just be in a different order.

While it’s probably a good assumption that Instagram’s algorithm will eventually more closely mirror Facebook’s, I think it’s important to keep an open mind here. Instagram is going to test this slowly to see how users respond, and how the algorithm is rolled out will depend upon that response.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it will depend upon whether users freak out and protest. Facebook users have freaked out and protested for a decade. That doesn’t matter.

Instead, they’ll watch Instagram users closely to see how their engagement levels and time using the social network change. That, ultimately, will determine next steps.

The Drop in Brand Engagement on Instagram

There was a time when Facebook was a utopia for brands. High reach and engagement with very little competition. That eventually changed, and many point to the algorithm. The algorithm, however, is only a small part of the story.

Instagram is a great real-time example. While brands are currently reacting to the threat of an algorithm, what they should be doing is reacting to the steep drop in engagement with brands on Instagram — without an algorithm.

According to a study by Quintly, engagement rate with brand content on Instagram has dropped 37.5%, from 4.96% to 3.10% from the beginning to the end of 2015.

According to that same study, post frequency from brands increased 27% from January to October of 2015, settling in at a final 17% increase from January to December.

Quintly also found that the growth rate of brand followings slowed from 21% at the beginning of 2015 to 16% by the end.

Social analytics and reporting company Locowise finds that things aren’t getting any better in 2016 — in fact, they appear to be getting worse.

According to the Locowise study, follower growth dropped nearly 46% to .2% from January to February of 2016. This was the lowest rate Locowise has recorded for brand growth on Instagram, falling nearly 93% since their first study in April of 2015.

Locowise, who uses a different approach to measuring engagement rate than Quintly, still reflects a consistent drop in the metric. They show a 11.58% in brand engagement rate to .84% from January to February, a 70% drop since last April.

There are more brands on Instagram. Those brands are creating more content than they once did. But Locowise also points out that users now follow 400-500 profiles, up from 250 a year ago.

Combined with the now 200,000 active advertisers on Instagram, it’s easy to see that competition in the feed is increasing at a furious pace. For comparison, Instagram now has more active monthly users (400 Million vs. 320 Million) and active advertisers (200,000 vs. 130,000) than Twitter.

The Need for an Algorithm

The cynic will say that this is all part of the parent company’s (Facebook’s) plan. Give brands a taste, make it harder for them and then force them to pay.

But read those numbers again. This is all without an algorithm. If Instagram does nothing, those numbers will surely continue to drop.

The User Experience

A significant drop in engagement is an ominous sign. It represents that users no longer care about something as much as they once did. No matter what the cause — more competition or more lower quality posts from brands — a user clicks less frequently than they did previously.

Why? Shouldn’t brands care about this? Instagram certainly does.

If user interest drops, Instagram needs to pay attention. If the user experience suffers, users may ultimately use the platform less often or abandon it altogether.

The User Experience is Important to Brands, Too

Whenever I hear brands griping about an algorithm, I can’t help but think they are being shortsighted.

Let’s say that no algorithm is created — Instagram wants to make the brands happy. So they keep everything as it is.

Engagement continues to drop. Reach — because of increasing competition — continues to drop. User experience continues to drop. Eventually, users spend less time on Instagram, and growth slows.

This is horrible for brands. Now your posts reach a small percentage of followers due not only to competition, but because fewer of them are on Instagram every day. Now when you do advertise, you have fewer engaged users to reach, and there is less targeting power based on user actions.

With an algorithm — if done right — users will see more of the content they want to see. Engagement rates will stabilize, if not go up. The user base will continue to grow, giving you more people to reach organically and paid, with more targeting power based on their high levels of interaction.

That doesn’t mean an Instagram algorithm will surely be a success or that it will have a positive impact on engagement. But there is precedent.

The Truth About the Facebook Algorithm

Panic about any talk of an algorithm has its source with Facebook. Brands feel wronged because their reach has dropped over the years, pointing to the algorithm as the cause.

First, it’s impossible to say how much the algorithm has contributed to the average brand’s post reach dropping from about 16% to 5-10% in the past two to three years. Facebook has also grown to more than 1.5 Billion monthly users (more than 1 Billion every day), with more than 3 Million active advertisers.

But here’s the inconvenient truth that brands, who swear that users are being wronged by not seeing more marketing content, fail to acknowledge: Engagement rate on Facebook is at an all-time high.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, there were 483 Million daily active users on Facebook, a number that was 57% of the monthly active users total.

Not only have the daily and monthly active users grown, but the ratio of the two has also continued to grow through the end of 2015. As of the fourth quarter of 2015, there are now more than 1 Billion daily active users (more than double the number from four years prior).

Possibly more importantly, the ratio of daily to monthly active users is now 65%. Let’s think through what this means…

1. The number of people who use Facebook every day continues to grow.

2. The share of monthly users who use Facebook every day continues to grow.

3. There are not only more active users now than ever before, but a larger percentage of users are on Facebook every day.

Are you following? On other platforms — take your pick between Myspace, Twitter, Google+ or Instagram — engagement tends to plateau. Interest wanes. Growth slows.

But on Facebook, all of these things continue to increase, despite Facebook becoming “less cool” and more like a utility.

We have to stop short of saying this is entirely due to the algorithm. But if the algorithm was a bad thing — if it negatively impacted the user experience — don’t you think we’d see this reflected in these numbers?

And if your response is, “But, Jon… Facebook isn’t making it more difficult for users to see content from friends with the algorithm, this mostly impacts brands,” you prove my point.

Yes, of course users prefer to see content from friends over content from brands (though not in all cases — and the algorithm doesn’t always negatively impact brands). That’s why the algorithm is needed in the first place.

Without it, Facebook would be flooded by brand content. Without it, Facebook would be a far less interesting place. The algorithm controls the balance of brand vs. user content (or more importantly, the balance of good vs. bad content) to assure a positive user experience.

The Lies About Reach

During the past few years, brands on Facebook have perpetuated several lies about what an algorithm does to brand content…

1. Without an algorithm, everyone sees your stuff. Of course this isn’t true. It’s obvious, right? But far too many brands and marketers seem to believe that 100% of those who follow a brand on social media should see their content because that follow acts as an “opt-in.”

This is silly talk. Not everyone is on that social network every day. Even those who are on that day may not be on when you post. And no, a follow does not imply that they want to see all of your content.

If you want to see what an unfiltered firehose does to brand exposure, look no further than Twitter. We don’t know what exactly the reach is there, but you can bet it’s below 1%. And I refer you to the prior graphic from Locowise that reports a .04% engagement rate on Twitter — about 1/13 of the rate on Facebook and 1/21 of the (falling) rate on Instagram.

2. Without an algorithm, more people will see your stuff. You assume this. You assume that with an algorithm, less of everything is seen. But it’s not true. Facebook favors the good stuff over the bad stuff.

So if you create content that users have indicated they love, you may actually reach more people and get more engagement than you would without an algorithm. Why?

Let’s go back to the understanding that not everyone is online when you post your content. Without an algorithm, you only reach those who were either online then or who saw it because someone they followed shared it.

With an algorithm, you may still see content if you weren’t online — even if someone you follow didn’t share it. This happens because Facebook (or Instagram) drives it to the top if they think you will like it.

3. Reach is directly correlated with engagement. Sure, if no one sees your content then no one will engage with it. But that’s not what typically happens with an algorithm, and it certainly isn’t its purpose.

The purpose of an algorithm is to show the right content to the right people. Let’s consider two scenarios: 1. Your content is shown to 100,000 people; 2. your content is shown to 10,000 people.

Which is better?

If you’re smart, you don’t know the answer. What if in the first case, your content received engagement from 100 people while in the second, your content received engagement from 500?

The type of engagement matters, of course, but you get the point. The purpose of an algorithm is to stop wasteful impressions and show content to people who actually want to see it (and before you say it, lurking can be measured).

Case in point: Locowise reported that Facebook brand post reach increased by 39.51% in January from December of 2015. The 10.86% reach rate was the highest since Locowise began measuring it.

Sounds great, right?

Meanwhile, engagement rate was down 11.18% from December to January. In other words? Reach does not always correlate with engagement. The increased reach was apparently due to a tweak in the algorithm, but one that did not result in an increase in engagement.

The problem, of course, is that too many brands would see that increase in reach as progress instead of focusing on the numbers that actually matter.

The Death of Twitter

Okay, allow me to involve myself in the “death of…” discussions.

Sure, Twitter isn’t dying (yet). But Twitter is certainly on a noticeable decline, and as a company Twitter appears to be getting desperate. You saw the horrible engagement rate earlier, and as mentioned, Instagram (a much younger platform) already has a larger monthly engaged user base as well as far more advertisers.

So… what is Twitter’s response? How are they trying to stay afloat? They created an algorithm.

Sure, this may help revenue, but not for the reasons the cynics think. It’s not that “Twitter is forcing brands to pay to reach their audience.” We already see that reaching your audience on Twitter is extremely difficult.

Instead, creating an algorithm is more of a long-term (if far too late) approach. It considers the user experience while also going after revenue.

As Facebook can attest, it’s nice when user experience and revenue coincide.

The Danger of an Algorithm

Understand that the fact that Instagram is creating an algorithm isn’t automatically a good thing. Instagram isn’t Facebook, and we don’t know how this is going to work. It’s certainly encouraging that Instagram is taking a very cautious approach with its slow roll-out.

There are some dangers associated with an algorithm…

The first is obvious: The algorithm may not work. It may not actually surface the content people want to see, and it may prevent people from seeing what they truly wanted to see.

We can’t expect the algorithm to be perfect. Facebook’s certainly is not, which is why it is constantly tweaked. But the goal should be to learn from the results and make changes as necessary so that engagement rate remains steady — or in Facebook’s case, grows.

The second is that an algorithm encourages its user base — and mostly brands — to game the system. On Facebook, brands have constantly chased the perceived preferences of the algorithm to post in ways to reach the most people, rather than simply posting the best content.

First, brands posted everything as a text update when such updates got the most reach. Then they switched to images. Now links. Meanwhile, users don’t care about the algorithm, and share in whatever way makes the most sense.

One of the primary dangers of an algorithm is that it can encourage people (again, almost always brands) to share unnaturally in an attempt to game the system.

Why an Algorithm Makes Sense for Instagram

Between the three primary social networks (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), an algorithm may actually make the most sense for Instagram.

It’s an obstacle for Facebook wanting to be a place for real-time sharing. And it could ultimately ruin what makes Twitter special for the same reason. But with Instagram, it matters quite a bit less whether something was shared right now or 12 hours ago.

Sure, some content is more valuable there when it’s real-time. But in most cases, seeing content in order of “best first” while pushing down the less engaging stuff may actually be a good fit for Instagram.

Your Turn

Who knows? It’s impossible to say now whether an algorithm will be good or bad for brands on Instagram. But before we freak out about it, it’s important to think through why it may be necessary, how it may help and what the alternative may be.

What do you think about an Instagram algorithm? Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Death of Brands that Care About People appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

As someone who loosely considers himself a marketer, I’m seeing a group of info-marketers that are quickly becoming dinosaurs. Their refusal to change will ultimately lead to their extinction.

One of the most popular marketing approaches for lazy people is setting up a landing page only — often with Lead Pages — and running ads to it. No website otherwise. Just a landing page to sell or get opt-ins.

They do it for their own businesses. Sometimes, they are agencies who do it for their clients.

If you are such a client, run.

Sometimes it works for a while. Sometimes it works really well. But when it stops working, I’ll get asked…

“So, how do I get the cost per conversion down? This is becoming too expensive!”

The truth is you’re probably screwed. And the reason for that is you thought playing the short game was enough. But when the well runs dry, your options become limited.

Creating only a landing page with no supporting website is a terrible short-term play. Here’s why…

[Tweet “Creating a landing page only — without a website — and running Facebook ads to it is not enough…”]

How Do You Gain Trust?

Those who build their business around a landing page only need to look at that approach through the user’s perspective.

Why Would I Convert?

Put yourself in the user’s shoes. You’ve been sent to a landing page. You’ve never heard of this brand before. You’ve never read their content. The only evidence that they know what they’re talking about is a sales page boasting how great they are.

That’s not going to be enough for most people.

Prove It!

Where is an article that they’ve written before that you can read? Where is a directory of content they’ve written on this topic? Anything?

Nope, just a long page selling you HARD on something. Making lots of claims. And you just don’t buy it.

But let’s click around the website to learn more about this company. Maybe an About page at least.

Wait… They Have No Website??

You’re supposed to trust a company that doesn’t even have its own website? They didn’t invest in themselves, why should you invest in them?

Building a business with a landing page only is cutting corners. It’s reserved for the get-rich-quick crowd — or the get-whatever-I-can-for-very-little crowd.

A website with content that isn’t always selling is evidence that you know what you’re talking about. That registering for that webinar might actually have value. That buying that ebook may actually provide some answers you are looking for.

How Do You Drive Traffic Without Ads?

Here lies a big problem with building a business around a landing page only: When you turn off your ads, traffic dries up.

Oh, I know the answer is that “we share links to social media, too.” Come on. All you do is push that one link to social media. You offer nothing of value. Why would anyone click it?

Since you can only drive traffic via your ads and you have only one page of “content” (used loosely), Google sure won’t love you. So don’t expect anything to get sent your way organically.

I also question how well you can actually build an email list with this approach. And when you do, what kind of information are you actually sending them via email??

Great! Thanks for subscribing to my webinar! Now I’m going to send you six months of emails begging you to buy my product.

Unsubscribe.

When I turn off my ads, I still get traffic. I get a lot of traffic. In fact, a very small percentage (under 5%) comes from my ads. Most comes from Google, email (my list is approaching 100k), organic on Facebook or from other sources.

How Do You Build a Relevant Audience?

If you’re building your business through a landing page, your goal rests entirely on that conversion. But whom do you target?

When I’m selling something or trying to get an opt-in, I target a large number of people who visit my website. They know who I am. They know what to expect.

With a landing page only, you focus on interests. When that doesn’t work, then what?

This is where the short game can cripple a business. You are putting everything into that short-term gain. But when it no longer works, you have nothing — no more conversions, no more traffic and no audience to target.

Sure, you have a SMALL amount of traffic that you could technically retarget. And you have that email list (that was likely built expensively) that you could message.

But what of value can you give them to get return business? How can you get them to keep coming back?

Stop Ignoring the 99%!

When you create an ad promoting an opt-in or product to a cold audience, you’ll be pretty lucky to get 1% of those people to click it. But let’s assume you do.

Of that 1%, a majority of them won’t convert. Those who didn’t convert may have eventually, but you lost them for good because you have nothing else to offer.

Of the other 99% who didn’t even click, you are missing opportunities. They didn’t click now, but they had the potential to click eventually.

That’s why it’s so much smarter to play the long game. You recognize that your potential customer pool is much larger than just that 1% (or a fraction of that 1%). People are on various levels of readiness to convert.

Create content to bring them into your funnel. Expose them to how you can help. That exposure — be it one, two or 100 blog posts — can eventually lead to an opt-in. And that opt-in may just lead to a sale — and potentially many sales.

Invest In Content

While having a blog doesn’t make sense to every business, I would argue it would help almost all of them. And if you’re in the info-marketing business, not having a blog is downright foolish.

Do the following:

1. Create a list of questions you get from customers or potential customers
2. Write blog posts answering those questions
3. Share those blog posts to your (now valuable) social media channels
4. Promote those blog posts via ads
5. Build your Website Custom Audience
6. Target your Website Custom Audience to drive more traffic
7. Create an ebook from the content you’ve written
8. Promote that ebook to your Website Custom Audience
9. Create a pop-up for your opt-in on that now well-trafficked website
10. Sell product to those who have visited your website or opted in

This approach is sustainable.

Your Turn

What do you think about the “landing page only” approach?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post No, A Landing Page Is Not Enough appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Social media tracking startup NewsWhip recently caused a stir with a post titled The ‘Faceboocalypse’: Publishers See Drop In Facebook Shares. The chaos that resulted — and hushed correction — highlights how the digital marketing industry remains irrationally obsessed with severely flawed metrics.

This post isn’t meant to pick on NewsWhip. They do good work and offer a helpful product. But the focus of this report has become all too common: Ignoring what is important while obsessing over flawed metrics that are often inaccurate, buggy and impossible to verify.

[Tweet “The Faceboocalypse: Are Facebook shares actually down due to a drop in reach? Well, maybe not…”]

It’s the Faceboocalypse!

NewsWhip’s content discovery platform Spike tracks shares and social engagement to help alert PR professionals and journalists of the stories getting the most attention. Analysis of this data was the source of a reported drop in Facebook shares beginning in mid-February that continued into March.

Here’s a chart showing a clear drop in daily Facebook shares of 10 major publishers…

Looks pretty bad, right?

It was found that after analyzing the 100 most-shared English language stories, there was a clear drop of shares from 16.4 Million in January to 10.2 Million in February.

So… what in the world could be behind this?

NewsWhip went on to — naturally — connect this drop to marketing’s favorite obsession: The Reach metric…

It’s understood that a reduction in the reach of these links – how many people see them in their news feed – is behind the fall-off in engagements.

It’s understood. But not proven or verified.

Whatever was happening, the sky was clearly falling. There was no other explanation.

A staff member at one major UK publisher described the reduce in engagement as a ‘Faceboocalypse’, and said that his team had noticed what he described as ‘a change to news feed algorithm which drastically reduced the reach of many news sites’ posts.’

Ah hah! Facebook screwed with the algorithm again! I knew it. Those bastards…

Shares appeared to be down. We can then assume this is due to a drop in reach (though not verified). Let’s not stop assuming about what all of this means…

It seems as though Facebook is less concerned with sending major traffic to external sites than it is with ensuring that its users can consume high quality content without having to leave the network’s familiar surrounds.

Except…

There was a pretty clear hole in the findings. NewsWhip noted that “likes and comments on the stories don’t seem to have been affected as much.” In fact, engagements remained up significantly year-over-year:

However, it’s important to note that engagements for top publishers remain very high, compared to 12 months ago. Indeed, many publishers in the top 25 have increased their engagements from 12 months ago significantly. NBC went from 9.2 million total Facebook interactions in February 2014 to over 19.8 million in February 2015. Likewise, the Daily Mail almost doubled their engagements, from 7.6 million to 14.5 million. The vast majority of sites are experiencing much higher levels of engagement than they did 12 months ago, reinforcing the fact that this is less wipe-out, more restructuring.

That’s weird, right?

It’s appreciated that NewsWhip provided those details. But concerning that they were glossed over.

You’d think that if you spotted a significant drop in social shares, you’d do a little more digging. What about other engagements? What about traffic? Is this a reporting bug, which seems to happen once or twice per year?

Things weren’t adding up. But let’s just assume that it’s because reach is dying and Facebook doesn’t want us sending traffic to our websites.

What Wasn’t Reported

There would have been a very simple way to verify this: How much traffic was being sent to these websites?

The assumptions were as follows:

1. Reach is down for pages
2. Facebook wants to keep users on Facebook, devaluing links
3. Shares are down because reach is down

If reach was down — causing a significant drop in shares — it would undoubtedly result in a huge drop in traffic.

So… did that happen? We don’t know. This was never reported.

Of course, the assumption that Facebook wants to keep people on the site at the expense of user experience conflicts with recent findings that reach for links for pages is way up lately — higher than any other post type.

The Correction

The NewsWhip article was updated on April 1. They were contacted by a Facebook representative who told them that a bug was behind the fall-off in reach.

We experienced an issue with Page Insights logging in February that failed to count some viral reach accurately. Importantly, actual delivery of posts was not affected by this issue; this was a reporting issue only. We identified and resolved this issue in early March and Page Insights are now correctly reporting organic reach. We apologize for any unintended impact this may have had to our partners.

Was this also behind the drop in shares? Neither the quote nor NewsWhip clarify on that. But since not all shares are publicly available information and Facebook mentioned a bug in viral reporting, it’s very likely that the drop in reach and shares are connected.

I won’t assume anything, of course. But we do know that there is a common weakness in both reach and shares that can lead to bad reporting.

The Problem with Reach and Shares

There is a major problem with obsessing over reach: It’s a flawed, fuzzy metric that cannot be verified. We trust what Facebook reports.

1. You do not know how many people actually saw your post. Facebook reports this based on impressions. But there is no way to verify it.

Contrast this with the reporting of post likes, comments or website clicks. I can dig into a post to see just how many comments and likes are attached to it. And I can compare Facebook data to website data to track traffic.

2. Facebook can change the way they report reach on a whim. This happened. And it can happen again.

There was a time when a person could be counted as being reached both organically and paid. I share my post and reach a fan. I then reach that person with the same post when it’s promoted. That counted as being reached once organically and once paid.

That is no longer the case. Now I can reach that person organically. As soon as that same person is also reached with the promoted post, they are no longer counted as being reached organically, but paid only. That way, adding Organic Reach + Paid Reach = Total Reach.

Call it what you will, but I consider that inaccurate. You can’t just discount that a person was reached organically so that the numbers add up neatly. Because of that, I firmly believe that organic reach of posts that also receive promotion is underreported.

3. There are often bugs in the reporting of reach. This is not the first time a bug in reach reporting has happened, and it won’t be the last.

Because reach is a fuzzy metric that is impossible to verify, we rely on Facebook accurately reporting it. But that doesn’t always happen. It’s not 100% dependable.

While such fuzziness is not typically associated with shares, the problem exists here as well. What Facebook reports and what you can verify are not the same.

A recent post of mine received 57 shares. When I clicked to view those shares, I get this pop-over…

When I count the shares, I only see 15 entries. Why?

Oh, there’s this little gray message at the bottom…

Facebook will only show me shares I’m supposed to see based on privacy settings. So that will typically be public shares or those from my friends.

As a result, there’s a gaping hole in this report. I can only confirm that 26% of the reported shares actually happened.

What this means is that there is plenty of room for error in the other 74%. Facebook could report that only 20 people shared the post. They could report that 2,000 people shared it.

I couldn’t verify it either way. All I know for sure is that 15 people did. And as a result, it’s dangerous to make any assumptions about surges in that data.

Does Reach Matter?

Let’s assume for a moment that reach actually did drop. If all engagement remained healthy — including website clicks and conversions — what does that drop in reach mean?

It would mean that Facebook was showing your content to people most likely to engage favorably — which is what we as marketers and users would want.

It would mean that your engagement rate would improve and the measurable actions would at least remain the same.

It would mean that Facebook is no longer showing your content to people who would have otherwise ignored you, cluttering their news feed.

If all of these things — which you can verify — remained the same while your reach dropped, the distinct possibility also exists that there is a bug in Facebook’s reporting. Or that Facebook changed the way that they report reach.

In either case, how much does your reach really matter if your traffic and conversions aren’t negatively impacted?

The typical response will be, “But, Jon! I won’t get any traffic if I don’t reach anyone!”

That’s not the argument here. No one is claiming that website traffic — the most important metric for these publishers — is down. Only that social shares and reach — two things that can’t be verified — are down.

Unless you have a report that emphatically shows a drop in website traffic and other metrics that matter, keep it to yourself. It’s misleading and helps no one.

The Metrics That Matter Most

We need to stop obsessing over fluff, vanity metrics that are often flawed and impossible to verify. Too many marketers lose sleep over them while ignoring what actually matters.

So what metrics should you care about? I wrote a post for Power Hitters Club members about that very topic.

Not a PHC member? Go here to learn more about how you can join us!

Your Turn

What are your thoughts on this report? And what results are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Faceboocalypse: Report Proves Flaws in Facebook Reach and Shares appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Locowise recently published research that grabbed my attention. Shared by AdWeek’s Social Times, I clicked on an article titled STUDY: Facebook Pages’ Organic Reach Is Not Quite Dead.

I’ve battled the “Organic Reach is Dead” claim many times before. It’s not dead. And I’m tired of focusing on this secondary metric instead of actions. So the title drew me in as something that I expected to agree with.

But the problem is where that article leads us. Ultimately, the recommendations are terrible for marketers, and only perpetuate the primitive algorithm chasing that does us no good.

[Tweet “Facebook links now get the most organic reach. Should you post more links now? Yeah, about that…”]

The Good: Organic Reach Isn’t Dead

The report started out harmless — even helpful. After analyzing 500 Facebook pages throughout February, Locowise determined that the average page reached a number that was seven percent of their fans organically.

What also comes as no surprise is that organic reach is better for smaller pages than big ones. Average organic reach was 11 percent of number of fans for pages with fewer than 10,000 likes while only 5 percent for pages with more than 100,000 likes.

Locowise then broke down organic reach by post type as follows:

• Links: 18%
• Videos: 9%
• Text Updates: 9%
• Photos: 7%

The Bad: Locowise’s Recommendations

Up until this point, this is interesting information to have. But the problem becomes what people do with this information — and ultimately what Locowise recommends.

Locowise starts:

This data says you should stop posting photos directly but include stunning imagery in the thumbnail images of your link posts instead.

I have a hard time believing this is even real. This is awful advice, and I’ll get to why in a moment.

But first, there’s more. Locowise offered five suggestions for page admins, including the following two:

• Publish link posts if you want to reach more people organically.
• Use stunning photos you would have posted directly as custom link thumbnails instead in order to gain more clicks and engagement.

Posting Method Should Not Be Determined by Reach

Instead of posting photos, you should share them as link thumbnails? Because of the added reach and supposed clicks and engagement?

This makes my head hurt.

If you have a photo to share, it’s because you have a photo to share. It’s not because you want to drive someone to your website (there are rare exceptions). So if I have a picture of the mountains, should I just make sure to make that a link thumbnail? To… what exactly?

So, next time I have a sweet Instagram photo to share, I’m going to take that square photo and crop it to be a 1.91:1 aspect ratio — ideal for link thumbnails. Then I’m going to have that link to the homepage of my website. Or to a lame blog post about that photo. Because people will love that.

Let’s take this a step further to make it even more ridiculous…

Since links get the most reach now, I’m no longer going to share text updates when I want to start a conversation. Instead, I’m going to try to start a conversation and then share a link that is hopefully connected in some way. It will confuse my audience — and it’s unlikely to generate more discussion — but at least it will reach more people. Maybe I’ll just put the text in the link thumbnail!

Since videos get more reach than photos, why share photos at all anymore? That’s dumb. I’ll just take a video of the photo I wanted to share. Since it will reach more people, that will be great!

I know this sounds ridiculous, and it should. It is completely and utterly ridiculous. And this approach is exactly why marketers are constantly scrambling.

But as ridiculous as it may sound, it’s nothing new. Marketers do things just like this, repeatedly. All in the name of reach.

PLEASE, Stop Chasing the Algorithm

Algorithms constantly change, and marketers tend to be to blame. It’s because we (or, I like to say “they”) are so irrationally obsessed with the reach metric that they’ll do crazy things.

When text updates received the most reach, everyone used text to share links — deleting the preview and only leaving an ugly URL. It rarely resulted in more traffic. Users hated it (they’d never share links that way). But it reached more people, so AWESOME!

When photo updates received the most reach, everyone used photos to share links. They’d share a photo and put the ugly URL in the description. It resulted in more reach and engagement, but it was completely empty engagement. People rarely clicked on the link.

The reason text did get the most reach is that users tended to engage more with text updates. But that changed when marketers made them so undesirable.

The reason photos received the most reach was that users tended to love engaging photos. But then marketers used photos of anything and everything to share links that were often unrelated and ruined it for everyone.

Marketers post in ways that are unnatural — ways that users never would — just to take advantage of temporary trends (or weaknesses) in what Facebook is most likely to surface.

Text updates were no longer interesting because marketers ruined them. Photo updates were no longer engaging because marketers ruined them. One reason Facebook is forced to constantly tweak the algorithm is that marketers are always trying to manipulate it.

Locowise recommends using links to share photos now. This only makes sense if you were previously chasing the algorithm by using photos to share links. Otherwise, this is rarely going to be a good user experience.

What in the world do you think is going to happen if marketers now feel the need to only share links, forcing this type of share when it should have been a text update or photo — all because of reach?

Marketers will force the usage of links to share a photo, pointing them to often irrelevant website pages. We know this will happen based on the use of irrelevant photos to share links already.

The result will be that users will hate it. They’ll click away immediately, and they may even start clicking on links less frequently.

Marketers will ruin the link share, and you know what will come next. The algorithm will change, links will get less news feed distribution and marketers will scramble to the next post type that gets the most reach.

I’d like to have faith in marketers that they know better, but we’ve seen this play out over and over again. They don’t learn.

Reach is Rarely the Primary Concern

It amazes me that the focus is placed entirely on reach in this study. Unfortunately, given our obsession with the metric, it’s not a big surprise.

What is your objective?

If you are sharing a blog post, you should be focused on getting the most website clicks possible.

If you are sharing a photo, you should be focused on getting as much engagement as possible.

If you are sharing a text update, you should be focused on getting as many comments as possible.

If you are sharing a video, you should be focused primarily on getting as many video views as possible, with website clicks sometimes being a secondary metric (when call-to-action button is used).

High reach does not guarantee that any of these things will be good. Low reach does not guarantee they will be bad. It is simply a terrible key performance indicator unless your only objective is awareness.

Even in the case of awareness, I’d argue that reach should not be your primary concern. After all, if your post reached 1,000,000 people and every single person ignored it without engaging in any way, I doubt those people would be particularly more aware about your brand.

By focusing on reach, you are ignoring the objective you had when you decided to make the share. You then share content unnaturally, and in ways that users would never share.

If you force a photo to be shared as a link, will you really get more people clicking in that photo? That’s the reason you wanted to share the photo in the first place, right?

Should You Start Sharing More Links?

I find this entire discussion somewhat comical. Should you share more links? If you have lots of interesting links to share, I guess.

If you were previously sharing links as photos or text updates with a text URL, yeah. You should change that. That was dumb. But that’s been dumb for a long time, not just because links get more reach now.

You shouldn’t start sharing links for the sake of sharing links. It should depend on what type of content you have, where you can provide value and what your objectives are.

The reason I scratch my head over this is that these algorithm changes don’t ever change my approach. When everyone said not to share links — and if you did, share them as text or photos — I was still sharing links the way Facebook intended. I do not refuse to share certain content based on the reach I can expect.

Let’s stop overcomplicating this.

If you want to start a conversation, share a text update.

If you want to share a great photo, just share that great photo.

If you want to drive traffic to your website, share that link the way Facebook intended.

Marketers tend to be overwhelmed by the changes, but it’s not particularly overwhelming if you refuse to allow them to dictate your approach.

Reach Does Not Equal Actions

The biggest issue I have with all of this is that reach doesn’t always equal actions. And it especially won’t always result in the actions you are looking for.

Marketers will often say that a post that gets lots of engagement will naturally receive more reach. So they are connected in this way.

This is only partially true. Yes, Facebook takes queues from users by how they engage with content. If the initial audience loves your post, Facebook is more likely to show it to others.

But that doesn’t always mean great reach. Just more reach than if that same post at the same time targeted at the same people had been terrible.

And more reach doesn’t always guarantee you received more actions — like website clicks. It’s a good sign, but the two aren’t always connected.

If one link share reaches 20,000 people and the other reaches 15,000, that does not guarantee that the one reaching 20,000 will get the most website clicks.

An extreme example came from my recent Facebook ads experiment. These ads targeted very small audiences (often fewer than 1-2,000), and they resulted in up to 75% organic reach due to the high level of engagement.

While reaching such a small number of people, I was routinely getting around 1,000 website clicks. If you’ve run many ads, you know how incredibly difficult that is while targeting a small audience.

But this is also the case for organic posts shared to pages as well. While reach and website clicks may be loosely connected, it is not a direct correlation.

In fact, I did a little research on this. I wrote this post for my Power Hitters Club members digging into my shares from the past five months. The results may surprise you.

Your Turn

What do you think about this report from Locowise, and the recommendation that you should start sharing more links?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Organic Reach is Changing: Should Brands Share More Links? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

1. How much did we spend on that campaign?
2. How much revenue did it bring?
3. What was the ROI?

I refer to this as the SHORT GAME.

This is a mistake. While the short game can result in positive returns, it’s also short-sighted. Bigger, sustained success is found when playing the LONG GAME.

[Tweet “Are you playing the short game with Facebook ads? Here’s how to succeed with the long game…”]

The Short Game

The short game is the most common — and easiest — way to measure advertising success. We compare the amount we spend on a campaign to the direct revenue that resulted to determine whether it was worth our time.

The typical marketer thinks that promoting content that doesn’t directly lead to a sale or opt-in is foolish and a waste of money. They hammer an audience — who may or may not know them — to get the conversion. The focus is on the right headline, call-to-action or image that leads to revenues.

It’s all about right now.

Since the short game is focused on immediate revenues, it’s also typically defined in terms like “pushy” or even “deceptive.” We do anything and everything to get that immediate sale so that revenues exceed ad spend.

You can play the short game successfully. You can hammer people who don’t know you, sell stuff and profit. But you are rarely building long-term relationships with such an approach, so it is an animal that constantly needs to be fed to stay profitable.

By playing the short game, you aren’t investing in long-term success. You’re only maximizing immediate revenues. You are leaving money — and more — on the table.

The Long Game

The long game focuses on a give and take relationship, not a TAKE AND TAKE, which defines the short game. Your ads aren’t focused only on what needs to be done to manipulate your audience to buy or opt-in at this very moment.

When you play the short game, you may run a campaign reaching 100,000 people. Of those 100,000 people, you’ll be happy to get 1,000 website clicks. And of those 1,000 website clicks, you may hope to get 10 sales (depending on the cost of the product, of course).

When taking this approach, you are essentially speed dating with your customer. While rarely having a serious, built-in relationship, you use the image and limited characters in your ad to sell your brand and entice your audience to buy now.

That said, there is a very large audience that may be interested in your related content. They may eventually be ready to buy, but they don’t trust you yet. And these people are being neglected.

The marketer who plays the long game understands that not every potential customer is ready to buy RIGHT NOW. The long game sees value in those who aren’t yet ready to buy or even provide an email address — but want to consume your content.

The long game is all about building TRUST, LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIPS and LONG-TERM CUSTOMERS.

While the short game is a quick burst, the long game is a foundation, a long-term commitment to quality and an investment in your business and your customer.

The long game comes in many forms, but it could look something like this…

1. Consistently drive an audience back to your website for helpful, educational, high-quality content that SERVES THE READER.
2. Over time, build TRUST and AUTHORITY. You know your topic. You are ethical. You are someone to go to for answers.
3. Offer something of value in exchange for an email address to those who have been consuming your free content.
4. SELL SOMETHING to the people who have been consuming your content or provided an email address.

Yes, the short game can lead to immediate sales. But often these are impulse buys.

By building trust, authority and value, you are nurturing long-term customers who beg you to create another product so that they can help support your business!

An Example of the Long Game

A staple in my strategy is spending money on Facebook ads that promote my blog posts. My priority is only to drive traffic — any conversion is a bonus. Such campaigns will almost always result in a negative ROI — at least when looking at immediate, direct revenue resulting from that campaign.

Some marketers think this approach is foolish. But a recent experiment I ran is a prime example of the long game in all of its glory.

I spent more than $3,000 over a two-month period to surface exclusive content to people who wanted to see it using Facebook ads. I shared 12 tips that were meant only to be helpful and educational, lacking any calls-to-action or product mentions.

While some opt-ins and sales still resulted (there were banner ads on the sidebar of these articles, as is always the case on my website), if you were to look only at the direct revenue from those first 12 tips, some would have considered it a colossal waste of time and money — some even called it as such.

But the people participating — a mere 833 by the end — were eating up my content. They begged to see more, and they complained when they weren’t seeing my most recent ad (can you believe that??).

After spending that $3k+ to serve helpful content, I then invited these participants to an exclusive webinar where I would share the results of what I found. On that webinar, I also offered them an exclusive discount on the Power Hitters Club — my private membership. After all, these were my ideal customers, and I wanted to do all I could to get them into the group.

The result: 38 new PHC members for an estimated value of more than $25,000.

This doesn’t even account for the more than 1,500 email addresses accumulated through the experiment. The long game — a collection of 15 campaigns that individually were a waste of money — was a roaring success.

Learn More

While this critical webinar was only made available to those who made it through the 12 tips and registered, I have since shared the replay with Power Hitters Club members as well. If you are a PHC member, you can now watch the replay here!

Not part of the Power Hitters Club yet? Go here to get started!

Your Turn

What do you think of the long game? Have you found success with this approach?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Find Facebook Advertising Success While Playing the Long Game appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Want to drive lots of website traffic? Report on the death of a celebrity before it’s true. Granted, no one will respect your content once they realize that your report was false, but it’s great for clicks.

The same applies to marketing and tech blogs. If you want clicks, just report that organic reach is dead for Facebook pages.

Run a Google search for “Facebook Organic Reach” and you’ll get some of the following results during the first three pages:

• Facebook Puts Everyone On Notice About The Death Of Organic Reach
• Facebook officially kills organic reach for brands, making all your Page “Likes” useless
• Facebook Explains Why Organic Reach Is Dying
• 2014: The year Facebook organic reach died
• Say Goodbye to Facebook Organic Reach
• Facebook’s organic reach over and out, what’s next for brands?
• Facebook Zero: Considering Life After the Demise of Organic Reach
• Facebook Killed Organic Reach — Thanks For The Favor
• Facebook Has Finally Killed Organic Reach. What Should Marketers Do Next?

This is just a sampling of those posts that refer specifically to the “death” or “demise” of Facebook organic reach for brands. One of those articles goes back so far as March 4 of 2014. Some of the posts come from some highly respected brands. Some I once respected much more than I do now.

Headlines claiming the “death of reach” get people riled up. They scare the uninformed. They encourage the pitchforks for those looking for a reason to break them out (they’re always looking for a reason!).

It’s click bait in its purest form.

Is organic reach down for pages? Yes, overall it is. Is it dead? Absolutely not. It’s not even close.

What each and every one of these articles does is show an insanely poor understanding of what is important. Unfortunately, they have thousands — or sometimes millions — of readers who trust every word they write. In the other cases, they had far fewer but they knew that using these words would attract the big numbers.

Either these websites and respected brands are knowingly twisting facts to get clicks or they’re plain ignorant and bad at what they do. Either way, it’s a huge disappointment.

It’s not just that these claims are so literally wrong. It’s that they distract you from what actually matters. That’s what makes them so irresponsible. They use your fear and emotion against you in favor of the almighty click.

But you aren’t stupid. You don’t take what I or anyone else says as fact. Let’s think this through.

[Tweet “Stop saying that Facebook page organic reach is dead. It’s not even close…”]

No, Facebook Didn’t “Kill” Reach

What connects the majority of the articles cited above is that the death of organic reach was more a prediction than a statement of fact based on statistics. Most were writing in response to Facebook’s announcement that overly promotional posts would be punished in the news feed.

What Facebook was saying: Users don’t like being sold to. If you share content with the primary goal of getting a sale or install, expect it to perform poorly in the news feed. If you really want people to see it, promote it with an ad.

This shouldn’t have been shocking. Overly promotional content almost never does well. I can tell you from first hand experience that my own content that performs best on Facebook creates discussion. It’s completely unrelated to any product or promotion.

But sometimes I want to reach users with something that promotes a product or opt-in. I know that content is less desirable to users. I know that it won’t get much engagement. I know that it won’t reach many people. I pay to force Facebook to show it.

People try to demonize Facebook for this, but it’s a reasonable solution. There is limited space available in the news feed. Facebook wants users to see that which is most engaging. If you want to be sure your fans see something that isn’t engaging, there are ad slots for that.

Yes, Reach is Dropping

We’ve heard it for close to three years now. Brands have complained about a drop in reach.

It started with ways to game the system. Share text updates but not links. Then share photos, but still not links. Links then became better and text was bad. But now you should share videos because they’re awesome.

Brands are always looking for a way to reach the most people. Understand that this is a source of the problem. It’s brands worrying too much about a fuzzy metric and not enough about actions.

Don’t you see how the two are related?

Marketers assumed that if reach goes up that clicks will follow. They assumed that if clicks go up that sales will follow. And they assumed that if reach drops, the entire house collapses.

Because marketers chase reach, they attempted to game the system at all costs. And because they attempted to game the system at all costs, they created crappy content that appeared — on the surface — to perform well. Because they created this crappy content that reached a lot of users, it became the source of a bad user experience.

The result: Facebook made adjustments to limit that crappy content. They did it over and over. Every time you tried to game the system, the restrictions got tighter.

Conventional wisdom says that the more people you reach, the more who will click. And the more who click, the more sales follow.

But what conventional wisdom ignores is quality. If you need to game and deceive and create crappy content to reach more people, you can’t expect quality engagement.

Let’s assume you created pretty good content, but your reach has dropped. Conventional wisdom says that this is bad. But what if you are still reaching the same people who engaged before? What if you no longer reach those who previously ignored you?

That is Facebook’s intention. And that’s precisely what they want for a good user experience.

Reach Isn’t Dead

Hey, maybe organic reach will be dead one day. But you know what? It’s more than a tad premature to report on it now.

Following are average organic reach numbers by audience size (per post), according to the Agorapulse Barometer:

• Fewer than 1,000 Fans: 25.1%
• 1,000 – 10,000 Fans: 13.8%
• 10,000 – 50,000 Fans: 10.0%
• 50,000 – 100,000 Fans: 9.8%
• More than 100,000 Fans: 7.7%

The average for my page right now is 16.9%.

The cynic will complain that these numbers aren’t 100%. Or that they’re lower than what they used to be.

But “dead” would mean 0.0%. Instead, we’re talking about 5,000 of 50,000 fans per post for the average page of that size. That’s a healthy heartbeat.

Reach Isn’t Dead and Likes Still Matter

The worst claim of all is that because reach is dropping, those likes of yours are now completely worthless. Just stop.

Again, understand what Facebook is doing. They are surfacing content to people most likely to care about it. So while the number of people you reach may have dropped, the quality of those people has probably increased.

So, you’re saying that the most important people — the people who want to engage in your content most — are “useless”? That’s pretty ridiculous.

If you’re still reaching fans, that matters. That organic content has value. And those likes have value.

But what many who make this claim ignore is that likes have value beyond organic distribution, too. By liking your page, users help bucket themselves for you so that you can serve ads to a very relevant group.

Oh, I know. You hate ads. That’s why you said likes were worthless. You’re never going to give Facebook a penny of your money.

These people will never get it. But the truth is that targeting a fan is far more likely to result in a conversion than targeting people by interest.

I’ve seen repeatedly that fans convert. That is far from useless!

You Care About More

Whenever I see an article that focuses only on reach, it tells me the author doesn’t see the full picture. And when you’re presenting only part of a picture, it’s easy to distort reality.

You never should have made reach your primary objective. It is not the measure of success or failure of a post.

Some will point to reach being a good indicator. They say that if you get great engagement that great reach will follow.

This is partially true. But understand that even then Facebook will be careful about who sees your post. There will simply be less waste — less empty reach.

Sure, you should care about comments, likes and shares. Shares are likely the most important, but that’s still only scratching the surface.

I hope you’re measuring how much traffic is being driven to your website as a result of your post. And if you’re really creative, you may even attempt to measure what those people did on your site when they got there.

Stop Reporting Death Prematurely

If you have any audience at all, you have a responsibility. Do not write headlines or make claims for the sole purpose of driving traffic. If you’re going to make such claims, be sure that you have stats to back them up.

If you share a post to your Facebook page reporting the death of reach, you might be concerned about the accuracy of such a report when you get comments, likes and shares. You certainly reached someone!

I published a text update — supposedly the “worst” type of content to share — last night regarding the reports of the death of reach. I’d say it’s doing okay…

Within 12 hours, that text update reached 28,000 people organically. More importantly, it resulted in more than 500 likes, 85 comments and 30 shares. Dead? Nah.

Even if reach is down to 5 or 10%, that is not the “death” of reach. Stop calling it that.

I’m sure your tweets on Twitter would kill to enjoy such a death.

Your Turn

What do you think? Is Facebook reach dead for pages? Am I just nuts?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post No, Facebook Organic Page Reach Is Not Dead appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

As you may already know, I started a little experiment on New Years Eve. I won’t completely rehash the experiment here (read this explanation), but here are the highlights:

• I want to challenge marketers to serve content via ads that is exclusive and provides value
• I created a campaign inviting people to participate
• Those who want to participate will be served exclusive content via ads
• I am spending money to serve ads that allow people to opt out of seeing these ads
• I am committing at least $3,000 as part of this experiment

There are no strings attached. You aren’t forced to provide an email address to view the content. I’m not selling you anything. I’m simply curious about how we can innovate in the area of Facebook advertising and make ads something that people actually want to see — rather than tricking them, which is far too often the strategy.

This approach is going to seem too good to be true to some, particularly those who don’t follow me closely. And unfortunately, so much damage has been done by advertisers that our group as a whole simply isn’t trustworthy.

The Typical User Doesn’t Trust Us

Granted, the vast majority of responses to the ads in my experiment have been positive. And knowing that as much as 80% of the distribution has been organic due to the insane engagement on these ads, I have to expect the occasional troll who stumbles upon it without being targeted.

For some background, here’s a look at my ad that invites people to participate in my experiment.

The ad targeting my fans has received a ton of responses. Here’s one of them:

Some common themes here:

• User prefers content from friends and family
• Social media advertising is tainted
• Social media advertising can’t be trusted
• The “Facebook Fraud” video is proof

I appreciated TJ’s response because he’s correct. The Facebook Fraud video was “so last year.” Just about everything is “so last year,” but that video in particular is about a year old now.

Those who choose to participate in my experiment see this “Welcome” ad (yes, I spent money on an ad welcoming participants):

Following was one of the comments…

I tend to stick strictly to the rule of “don’t feed the trolls,” but I unfortunately couldn’t help myself.

Later in the thread, some of my awesome readers came to my defense, but that didn’t deter our friend Russell…

Some more common themes here:

• An old trick that offers nothing of value
• I’m promising something for nothing, but that will never happen
• Ads offer nothing of value
• Ads are spam, nothing more

Remember: This is a “Welcome” ad to anyone who clicked my ad to participate. So Russell could only see this if he were participating (not likely) or a friend of his was (awesome friend).

He didn’t click, he said. My favorite part: HE BLOCKED ME AND COMMENTED!

There is Damage to Be Undone

I’m not sharing this with you to get sympathy. I’m not hoping to rile the troops to go out and attack Tim and Russell.

Instead, I’m glad they shared. Their reactions are common. I’d say that they represent a very large group of people — if not a majority, a very vocal minority.

We can’t be trusted. Advertisers never offer anything of value. Ads are only spam. OUR CONTENT IS TO BE BLOCKED!

To a point, I completely agree with this. And if they don’t know me, why would my ads be any different?

This is why it’s so important that we put aside our strategies of the past. I challenge you to think differently. Think of ways that you can offer value with your advertising instead of thinking only about how you can get the immediate buck.

That doesn’t mean your advertising should result in a negative ROI. I firmly believe that this approach can be taken and lead to profits — possibly huge profits.

But it’s a matter of playing the long game rather than the short game, which is a phrase I’ve said and written repeatedly the past few months.

When we build a community, we talk about attracting people who like us. Who love us. Who trust us.

We educate. We entertain. We inform.

But when it’s time to advertise, that often goes out the window. We go straight to the sale, often accompanied by deceptive copy and claims.

That’s old school. That’s “so last year.” If it continues to be your approach in 2015 and beyond, you will be left behind.

Your Turn

What are your thoughts? Is it time for advertisers to get more creative? Do we deserve the negative response this industry tends to receive?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Advertising and Spam, Deception, Value and Trust appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Facebook presents enormous opportunities for brands during the holidays. This time more than any other, people are in the mood to spend money. Through Facebook ads, the best — and worst — deals can be delivered to them.

As a result, advertisers flock to the social network during November and December. They dump piles of money into it, hoping to cash in.

But many will fail.

Truth is that the deck is stacked against many of these advertisers. They’ll fail and assume it doesn’t work without realizing that they are part of the problem.

In this post, I’m going to break down why failure is even more likely during this period of time and what advertisers should be doing to succeed.

[Tweet “Are brands prepared to succeed this holiday season, or are they blindly dumping money into Facebook?”]

Competition is Higher than Ever

So, you wanna sell your widget during the holidays? Good luck. So does everyone else.

I’m sure you think that your 10% off deal is awesome and that it’s impossible to ignore. But you’re competing with an endless supply of brands who want to reach those same users. They are offering better products that are more relevant to them and at better prices.

That ignores the fact that people simply aren’t on Facebook to buy something. They do sometimes. They have to be in the right mood. They have to trust you. But success of “Buy! Buy! Buy!” will be limited to those who are most creative, who target the right people and use the right messaging.

Prices are Higher than Ever

Oh, so about all of those people advertising on Facebook at the same time…

Most advertisers don’t realize this, but the price you pay for Facebook ads is largely determined by competition. No, Facebook isn’t sitting there at a dial with an evil grin, raising the price on you as they feel fit.

Facebook limits ad inventory so that a user’s news feed is more stories than ads. And Facebook limits the amount of content they see every day to be sure that it’s as engaging as possible.

With ad inventory limited, advertisers bid for eyeballs and clicks. Research from SocialCode shows that CPM prices in 2013 peaked on Black Friday, with a CPM Index of 2.58.

In other words, it was costing advertisers 2.58X more to have an ad shown 1,000 times on that day than on the average day in 2013.

As you can see from that graphic above, the rise in CPM Index is happening faster and sooner this holiday season, so we can expect much of the same — or worse.

Last year, the CPM Index was regularly around 2.0 last December. So you can expect to pay at least double to reach someone than you normally would.

This is going to result in a ton of failure. If you otherwise skate by with positive ROI when it cost you $5 to reach 1,000 people, it’s now going to cost $10 to reach that same group.

Some will continue to profit. But others will fail miserably.

The Users Don’t Know You

The fact that it costs twice as much to run Facebook ads during this time is certainly important. But this point may be even bigger.

Many of the advertisers throwing money at Facebook right now were invisible on the social network for 10 months of the year. Now they’ve decided it’s time to hit some quotas and sell product.

The problem is that many are then targeting blindly. They don’t have an audience they’ve nurtured, so they’re running ads targeted at people broadly. No or minimal trust was built ahead of time.

Fans convert. Website visitors convert. If you aren’t targeting the right people — and many of those who join the crowd during this time won’t be — you’re more likely to reach people unwilling to click your ads.

That also leads to this…

You Don’t Know What You are Doing

If you weren’t advertising year-around, this is a really bad time to get your feet wet. Even if you advertised last holiday season, so much has changed since then.

Too many advertisers jump in by targeting people based on interests.

Too many advertisers jump in by using CPC only.

Too many advertisers jump in without being able to properly monitor success.

Too many advertisers jump in having no freaking clue what they’re doing.

You should be targeting your fans, assuming they’re an engaged and relevant group. You should be targeting your website visitors. These two groups will provide most of your sales.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t bother with CPC. Allow Facebook to optimize for the conversion for you.

Chances are good that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you aren’t using conversion tracking when you sell. So instead, your measure of success is based on fuzzy metrics like clicks, cost per click and CPM. Good luck with that.

A higher percentage of advertisers getting involved right now are doing so because they think they need to. As a result, many will completely screw it up.

[adrotate banner=”43″]

Do This Instead…

Your biggest mistake was assuming you could have a two-month fling with Facebook ads and get any kind of results. The odds are stacked against you.

Instead, you should spend the entire year building a highly engaged — and relevant — community. They know you. They trust you. They’re used to seeing you on Facebook. These people are most likely to buy.

You should spend the year driving traffic to your website. Those who visit your website once are likely to return — but reengaging them is important. By spending money to drive website traffic, this also builds an audience you can remarket to later to build your fan base, increase your email list and sell.

You should spend the year building your email list. Use offers and private groups as carrots to collect email addresses. Email these people throughout the year. When your big sales push comes during the holidays, you’ll be emailing as well as reaching them with Facebook ads.

You should spend the year failing and learning. The holiday season is not the time to figure out what works. If you’re going to dedicate a chunk of your annual ad budget now, you sure as hell better know what group of people you’re targeting, with what message that works best and with the most effective bidding methods.

Facebook advertising is a commitment. To truly succeed, you need to do more than get your feet wet.

You need to swim.

Your Turn

Are you advertising on Facebook this holiday season? What approach are you taking?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Happy Holidays: The Season of Failing with Facebook Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

That’s probably the click-baitiest (most click-baity?) headline I’ve ever written. I hate click-bait. I’m the king of boring headlines that just tell you what the post is going to be about. But this headline is not intended to “bait.”

No, I believe it: It really may be time.

You and Facebook just aren’t getting along. You are losing money running ads, and you don’t have the time or resources to manage a page.

Maybe you don’t trust Facebook, and you’re tired of all of the changes. You’re convinced that Facebook is out to screw you, and will do all they can to force you to buy ads.

So do it. Quit marketing on Facebook. I’m serious.

[Tweet “It’s time for you to quit marketing on Facebook. Just do something else. Here’s why…”]

You Hate the Algorithm Changes

For a while there, everyone was sharing photos. “They” said photos got the most engagement, so you did what they said. You even used photos when sharing links — pasting a URL above the image — because, you know, link reach and engagement were terrible.

But when text updates got the most reach, you started sharing links to your website as an ugly URL without a thumbnail image or description.

Then Facebook said that brands were ruining photos and links, so they adjusted the algorithm to favor links shared the old fashioned way and punish those who attempted to game the system.

You were angry because you had to adjust again. But you did.

So you started sharing links, but you used click bait headlines to draw people in, even though those people ended up being disappointed by what they found and didn’t stick around.

You posted memes because they attracted the most engagement, even if that engagement was meaningless.

Facebook then adjusted the algorithm again for marketers like you, punishing click bait and memes. You were angry and getting tired of having to constantly adjust your strategy based on Facebook’s latest algorithm.

At that point, you were exhausted. Creativity is hard without memes, click bait and the ability to game the system. So you just sold your crap all day.

At least then you could get a positive return on your efforts. You needed sales, and Facebook was giving you a free way to do it. And you certainly weren’t going to give Facebook your money to run ads.

Facebook then adjusted the algorithm to punish brands that use organic posts to sell things.

That’s it. You’re done.

Hey, I don’t blame you. It’s exhausting chasing an algorithm. And when you do, you’re essentially a puppet as that algorithm pulls the strings.

Maybe you didn’t do all of these things. But those who care most about algorithmic changes are those who chase them.

When satisfying an algorithm is your priority, you lose control. And being out of control is a really crappy feeling.

I can tell you that my posting strategy has barely changed during the past three years. I care very little about Facebook’s algorithm. Focus has always been on providing the highest quality content possible that appeals to my target audience.

It’s all about reaching the right people with the right message at the right time.

I’ve always shared links. Lots of them, algorithm be damned.

If you want to continue to give Facebook a shot, you need to accept something: The news feed algorithm is designed to serve users the content they want to see.

If you don’t believe this, you should just quit now. I see you rolling your eyes. Don’t even waste another minute of your time.

But if you come to grips with that sentence, you will gain a better understanding of your place on Facebook. Once you accept that your fans care more about their friends’ content than yours, you’ll find a peaceful place in the Facebook universe.

People come to Facebook at a habitual rate to share, argue, congratulate and empathize. Their friends are the stars while the pages they like are the side show. When you share, you need to keep this in mind and it needs to alter your expectations.

Do you understand that?

When they liked your page, it wasn’t an explicit opt-in to see every piece of content you ever write. In fact, most don’t care if they never see a post from you — ever.

Are you okay with that?

If you are, then cool. Continue on this crazy Facebook journey.

If not, it’s really not worth it. Facebook’s news feed algorithm is here to stay, and filtering is likely to get worse as more people and businesses join.

It’s a battle you’ll continue to fight, and you’ll always lose.

You Can Get Better Reach Elsewhere

Back in the good ‘ol days when we were kids, you were reaching 50% of your fans with a single post. That was awesome, right??

[NOTE: I don’t know that this is actually true, but we tend to exaggerate history a bit by nature.]

Then more people started using Facebook. Millions of businesses saw the opportunities for this free advertising. And suddenly there was some crazy competition in the news feed.

Facebook has always filtered their feed, but that filtering quickly became more pronounced. If you’d typically see 1,500 stories in a day, Facebook showed you only 300 — skipping stuff from friends, groups and pages that Facebook didn’t think you’d care about.

I know, I know. Facebook doesn’t know what you or anyone else wants. I’d argue that they know more about what you want than you do. They have the data of every click and action on the site. They know.

They tested the hell out of this, trying to find the right combination that would lead to the most engagement and time on site. Because end of the day, they need users to stick around for as long as possible.

But that meant you — the business — started reaching a lower percentage of your fans with a single post. Before, you’d always fail to reach a large chunk because they weren’t online when you posted it. But now Facebook started keeping you from reaching those who actually were online — more and more.

Then you started reaching about 25%. Then it was 16%. Then it was 10%. Then it was 5% and even less.

Forget this! You quit!

I understand it’s frustrating, but is Twitter any better? Will you reach more of your followers with a single tweet — because the feed is unfiltered?

Is Google+ any better? Where a lower percentage of those connected to you show up to read posts every day?

If you’re convinced that the grass is greener on the other side, hop on that horse and trot through the pasture.

[That is the most country thing I’ve ever written and I’m not even sure where it came from.]

But before you go, something to think about based on Facebook pages that have benchmarked with the Agorapulse Barometer…

The average business with fewer than 1,000 fans reaches 22.9% of them with a post.

The average business with between 1,000 and 10,000 fans reaches 12.8%.

The average of all pages is 9.0%.

I know that’s not 50% (or 25%, 16% or 10%), but is it really bad that 9% of your fans — regardless of whether they were online when you posted — saw a given post?

We’re freaking spoiled by what “once was.” Facebook gave us a lifetime supply of chocolate, and now they only give us a month’s supply.

But again, you have to wonder… Of your 10,000 followers on Twitter, how many see that single tweet? You know, that tweet that gets buried 60 seconds after you write it?

It’s small. But I know what you’re thinking: Reach of a single tweet doesn’t matter because I tweet multiple times!

B.I.N.G.O.

I’ve never understood why we obsess over reach of a single post on Facebook either. If you monitored the reach of your posts over a given day or week, you might be surprised by what you see.

But none of this really matters to you. It’s principle. Facebook is keeping you from reaching people for free you once reached easily.

Sometimes change for the sake of change is a good thing. I want the Brewers to fire Ron Roenicke to hire another hack who will be just as bad. Sometimes it’s the mere act of change that can refocus and energize you.

I have serious doubts that you’ll reach more people on Twitter. But that doesn’t mean you won’t have success with it.

If you do pick up and move everything from Facebook, be sure to track that Twitter reach and let me know what you find.

You Think the Value of a Fan is Worthless

Now that your reach has dwindled, you’re convinced that the value of a fan is no more. All of that time and energy. Worthless.

In some cases, those fans might be worthless.

You might have run a constant stream of sweepstakes to increase the number of fans, under pressure from higher ups.

You may have run poorly targeted ads, focusing on price and quantity over quality.

Hey, you may have even resorted to buying fans (but we’ll keep that between us).

If you did these things, you’re absolutely right. Your fans are completely worthless.

Maybe you didn’t do these things. Maybe your audience is more valuable than you think. Maybe your audience is worthless now, but it has potential that you didn’t know existed.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that my page’s fans aren’t worthless, and I know the fans of many pages are hugely valuable.

When I shared this link the other day, it drove 4,545 people to my website. Most of that was organic.

I know, I know. That was an abnormally popular post. But this one drove 1,900…

This one drove 1,035…

And this one more than 5,000…

They’re all recent and didn’t use any lame tactics to game the system. Just good old fashioned, boring link shares.

Traffic to my website is extremely important to me. The fact that I can drive this much traffic with a single post — with and without advertising — is like having a second powerful email list.

I don’t share these to brag. Only to show what’s possible — and after three years of really hard work building a relevant audience of fans to help get these kinds of results.

My fans also convert, which is why building an audience of highly relevant people is the first step to my four-step Facebook sales funnel.

Oh, I know just what you’re thinking: But Jon! We can’t share promotional organic posts anymore!

You are correct. And really, those organic posts that push products don’t perform that well for me anyway. That’s why I use ads.

Yeah, fans convert. They convert at a very high rate. I get registrations for anywhere from $.50 to $2, depending on the campaign.

Here’s a collection of nine campaigns that were created to drive fans to register for a webinar.

At or under $1, a total of 1,397 conversions for an average price of $.76. The main reason for this is because I was targeting fans.

If you don’t believe in the power of the like, you should believe in the power of a subscriber. You own that email address. They can now enter your funnel.

Fans also buy. I wrote about how I got a 35X ROI (49X when targeting fans) last year on ads that promoted my first training course. I then ran an online offer that netted a 10X ROI.

Sure, 10X and 35X are difficult to replicate. But some recent campaigns for my new course netted a 6.7X ROI…

Understand that I’ve said time and time again that it’s not easy selling high priced items on Facebook. Well, that course has been sold for $297 and $347 (most buy the bundle). Last year’s course was sold for $73.50 to $147, which undoubtedly helped the conversion rate.

I’ll even track conversions when running a campaign that isn’t specifically promoting a product. Crazy thing is that I’ll see high return on some of those posts, too.

Like the promotion of my Copyblogger post that resulted in $1,929 in sales, even though my focus was on traffic…

You know what the common theme here is? I get these results from targeting two groups: My fans and my website visitors.

Do you know why I do this? Because it’s much, much harder to sell to people who don’t know me. In fact, I don’t even try anymore.

So, yes, fans have a whole lot of value. I see it every day. It’s why I’m so focused on building that relevant audience.

If you’re a true conspiracy theorist and cynic — and there are plenty who have argued this — I only get my results because I write about Facebook. Fine. Assume that.

And if you actually believe that’s true, it’s one more reason you shouldn’t be marketing on Facebook.

That leads to this…

You Don’t Trust Facebook

Look, I get it. You don’t trust Facebook. You think Facebook is evil. They are doing horrible things with your data. They don’t respect your privacy. They are keeping fans who want nothing more than to only read your content all day long from seeing it. They’re doing all they can — but they won’t succeed, dangit! — to force you to pay for ads. Mark Zuckerberg is the devil.

They’re jerks. Did I cover it all?

This may be a bit over the top, but I see so many of these comments every single day. It’s crazy to me that I see so much of it on Facebook and in the comments of my blog posts — posts that are always about Facebook advertising.

If you think these things about Facebook, why are you there? Why are you even thinking about marketing or advertising there?

You know what I do with people and companies I don’t trust? I make sure not to have anything to do with them. I don’t give them my money. I don’t give them my time. I avoid them at all costs.

I know it seems unavoidable because everyone and their moms are on Facebook, but it’s not a necessary evil. If you think these things about Facebook, why in the world would you give them a single penny or minute of your time?

Stop doing it. You’re torturing yourself. You’re violating your own values, and it’s gotta feel dirty.

You’re at the front of every Facebook conspiracy, and you’ve finally had enough. It’s time to move on.

Your Facebook Ads Don’t Work

Creating Facebook ad campaigns that work is a science. It takes time and a whole lot of patience.

There is no easy button. Well, there is the Boost button, but while that may be easy it isn’t the foundation of Facebook advertising success.

It’s easy to get Facebook ads wrong. It’s easy to think you’re finding success when you’re really not.

You boosted those posts that resulted in a ton of engagement (but nothing else).

You built your fan base by targeting interests, not bothering to limit your audience by country.

You saw great “results,” but you were following the wrong numbers.

Or maybe you tried to sell your product and got no response.

Or you wrote a post vaguely instructing users to subscribe to your newsletter, but didn’t see a trickle.

Or maybe none of these things, but you simply couldn’t get Facebook ads to work. There are hundreds of reasons why that may have been. Some could be due to the industry you’re in. But more often than not, it goes a whole lot deeper than that.

It could have been the copy. It could have been the imagery. It could have been the landing page (oh, I’ve seen some awful ones!). It could have been the product. It could have been the bidding. It could have been the placement.

In all likelihood, though, it was the targeting.

Rewind to the stories about results I see targeting my fans and those who visit my website. I don’t consider myself a good copy guy. I don’t have the most creative imagery. But I’m targeting the right people.

If you don’t build a raving fan base by targeting those who know you, their loyalty will be paper thin.

If you don’t promote posts to increase website traffic by targeting those who have visited your website before, expect to pay more to get the click.

And if you don’t use the four step sales funnel to target those most likely to buy, you shouldn’t expect a sale.

But doing this takes a lot of planning. It takes plenty of analysis. It even takes a whole bunch of failure.

That’s fine. Facebook may not be for you.

Facebook Marketing is Not for Everyone

Look, finding success on Facebook is hard. Creating content that people want to see is hard. Running ads that convert and lead to a positive ROI is really freaking hard.

But do you expect it to be easy?

These are difficult skills. There are more businesses who ARE on Facebook than who AREN’T. As a result, there will be a whole lot of failing going on.

You know what else is hard? Creating a successful website that attracts traffic. Building an email list that converts. Algebra is really freaking hard.

These are all difficult skills. If finding success on Facebook, creating a successful website, building an email list that converts or completing that ridiculous math problem are too much, it’s okay. Not everyone can do those things well.

But it’s also not necessarily your fault. You may be in a really tough niche. You may not have the expertise. And you may not have the time or resources to make it work.

That’s completely fine. Stop wasting your time on something that isn’t working for you. Go find something that does.

More and more marketers are voicing their frustration with Facebook. This isn’t a surprise since it’s a crowded, crowded space, and it’s becoming “survival of the fittest” up in here.

But you know what? You don’t need to continue being frustrated. If you move on, it’ll be okay.

And in the end, that may just be best for everyone.

Your Turn

This rant is the result of my own frustration hearing from those who constantly complain, all while having the option to change. It’s meant to be somewhat light-hearted and underscore that there is an option.

But I also know that this is a heated topic with strong opinions, particularly from those who feel they’ve been wronged by Facebook. The two main points of this post:

1. Success is possible
2. Marketing on Facebook isn’t required

What do you think? Is it time for more marketers to quit Facebook?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post It May Be Time for You to Quit Marketing on Facebook appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

On November 7, Facebook announced a new change that would make it easier for users to unfollow friends and pages that overwhelmed their feeds.

The response was typical.

Users: {crickets}.

Marketers: This is bu&&$!$!

Well, not all marketers. I’ve actually seen an improvement in terms of marketers taking a level-headed approach to changes. But that could also be because so many of the crazies have already jumped ship.

But make no mistake, there are plenty of crazies around. Facebook remains the biggest show in town, both for users and marketers. As a result, it seems no change can be released without a bit of controversy.

[Tweet “Facebook has made it easier for users to unfollow the boring brands that pollute their news feeds. This is a good thing…”]

What Facebook Changed

First, Facebook has a new feature that will highlight the people, pages and groups you saw the most in your news feed during the past week.

If you think that person, page or group is annoying, you can easily unfollow it. As a result, you’ll still like the page, friend that person or be part of that group, but you won’t see them in your news feed anymore.

Immediately below that list of active people, pages or groups is a list of those you have already unfollowed. This is Facebook’s way of resurfacing the spurned girlfriends with a “Are you sure? I’m still here if you want me!” message.

Additionally, if you see a story in the news feed that annoys you, click the arrow at the top right to “see less” from that source.

You could then unfollow them, report them or check out those news feed settings of those you’ve unfollowed recently.

How it Impacts Marketers

It’s tough to say. Quite clearly, you shouldn’t be annoying. But that’s always been true.

Still, being annoying could have more immediate consequences now. In the past, a “fan” may simply endure your garbage. They wouldn’t act on your posts anyway. But they wouldn’t unfollow you.

But now, it becomes much easier to unfollow you. And that could ultimately mean you’ll reach even fewer of your fans — at least even fewer of those who thought you were annoying.

This is all in theory, of course. If you think something is annoying, it seems odd that you’d see much of that content in the first place. If news feed works the way it should, it’s tuned to how you interact with the people, pages and groups that bring you content.

But this is something to watch. Beyond simply making sure you aren’t annoying, frequency is suddenly highlighted as a potentially bad thing. So — in theory — you should be more careful now about how often you post per day.

I say “in theory” for a reason. Facebook is giving users the power to more easily see less from sources they don’t care about. So if they don’t care about you, what are you really losing — other than misleading, fluff numbers?

Marketers: It’s Not About You

Following is Mark Zuckerberg’s response to a question about declining page reach in the public Q&A on November 6:

There’s this inherent conflict in the system, though. Are we trying to optimize News Feed to give each person, all of you guys, the best experience when you’re reading? Or are we trying to help businesses just reach as many people as possible? And in every decision that we make, we optimize for the first, for making it so that for the people that we serve that use Facebook and are reading News Feed get the very best experience that they can.

The cynical marketer will roll their eyes and say, “Whatever, Mark. You’re just trying to squeeze me for every last dollar. Screw you.”

But let’s think about this for a minute…

If Facebook crafts the news feed to appease brands — at the expense of user experience — users will see less of what they actually want to see. They will engage less with content. They will become bored. And they will spend less time on Facebook — while some will abandon it altogether.

If users spend less time on Facebook, there are fewer users to view organic posts from brands. There is less data to target via ads. There are fewer users to reach with those ads. And ultimately, there is less money for Facebook to make.

That’s the long game, of course. Facebook needs a highly engaged, growing audience to continue to profit into the future. Too many marketers think in terms of the short game. They think about what impacts them now instead of how this affects them long-term.

If the user experience suffers, Facebook becomes less attractive to brands, marketers and advertisers. Facebook suffers. If the user experience is good, it remains a gold mine.

Facebook prioritizes what’s good for users over what’s good for your business, and you know what? That’s a good thing.

No, that’s a great thing.

But… This is Gonna Kill My Numbers!

You’re so, so short-sighted if you see this as a bad thing for your business.

If you focus on the wrong numbers, yeah. You’re pissed.

If your key performance indicator is reach, you’re kicking up sand. But Facebook doesn’t care about your reach, and neither do your fans.

You should be looking at far more than reach. You should be looking at the website traffic you drive, the email addresses you collect and the sales you make.

The problem is that so many marketers have focused on hollow numbers. They buy likes or run promotions that only pad a number without improving profit potential. They create fluff content that is aimed at gaming the system rather than appealing to the potential customer who matters.

What you built looked good from the outside. You were proud of it. But you built a house of cards.

What’s Your Reach on Twitter Again?

Changes like this one could impact reach because it increases the likelihood that a user who likes your page won’t see your content (in this case because they unfollowed you). So we can expect the continued overemphasis of this metric.

Reach is controversial for only one reason: Facebook tells you what it is.

I’ve read that Facebook pulled a “bait and switch” by promising to remain free forever, but then requiring brands to pay to reach everyone. I find this so ridiculous.

You could never reach everyone. You never will. And as more and more users and brands flood Facebook, it was inevitable that you’d reach a smaller percentage of people — filtered or not.

An unfiltered feed would not be good for you. It would be worse. It would be Twitter. While I like and use Twitter, it’s no mystery that Twitter is less popular than Facebook. And with an unfiltered news feed, growth and usage on Facebook would decline.

I know those with torches and pitchforks won’t acknowledge this, but a filtering system that surfaces content to those most likely to want to see it is a good thing for you.

An unfiltered news feed would be freaking madness. There are now well over 1 Billion users on Facebook. More than half are there every single day. Every marketer and their mother is there trying to reach them.

If that feed were unfiltered, you wouldn’t reach more people. You wouldn’t. That boring post of yours would get buried in 30 seconds.

Yes, your reach has dropped a lot during the past few years. But we were also really freaking spoiled before. We’re still spoiled now, and we don’t even know it.

Do me a favor and send a tweet to your 5,000 bot and auto-dm followers on Twitter. How many of them actually saw it?

What the angry marketer fails to understand is that Facebook isn’t out to screw you. You’re not the only one being filtered. Users and groups get filtered, too, surfacing ANY content that is expected to be most interesting to the user.

Facebook needs the user to be interested. They need the user to be engaged. And given the continued growth and trending time on site, how can we argue that the way they’ve surfaced content is wrong?

If users were pissed that they weren’t seeing the posts they want to see about brands, there would be a negative impact in usage. There hasn’t been. It’s been the complete opposite.

The fact that Facebook is constantly tweaking to make sure users are seeing the most engaging content possible is not reason to revolt. It’s reason to invest for the future.

It’s Quality Over Quantity!

Yes, the number of fans matters. It still does. It really, really does.

But more than ever, it’s the quality of those people that matters most. Do they care about your content? Do they click? Do they engage? Do they lead to business?

This also goes both ways. Your quality matters just as much. Just because someone liked your page doesn’t mean you are obligated to spam the hell out of them with boring crap and complain when you don’t get results.

It may be time to post less frequently. But most importantly, you need to post content that people actually care about.

I’m looking at you, click-baiting, cat meme brand. It’s time to start focusing on quality posts instead of finding the latest way to game the system.

Focus On What Matters

Those who have been doing things the right way for years now can read this post without worry. You don’t game the system. You built an audience that cares about your content. You focus on providing value to your target audience so they’re begging for more.

But the rest? Get cracking on a new strategy. You’re gonna need it.

Your Turn

What do you think of these updates? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Doesn’t Care About Your Reach — And Neither Do Users appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

You’ve undoubtedly heard by now that Copyblogger shut down its Facebook page. Since Copyblogger is a respected educator on blogging and content marketing, this move is the center of controversy.

I want to be clear that I am a huge fan of Copyblogger. I think back to the first year of my website, and their content helped blaze a path during a time I lacked vision.

This post isn’t meant to bash Copyblogger for their decision. It’s something they put a lot of thought into, and I’m sure it was well calculated. In fact, it took a whole lot of guts to do something like this. But as a public decision that has received so much attention, it deserves to be dissected.

Also keep in mind that much of my disappointment is based on them not using Facebook ads. However, that’s just not their style. So understand that my suggestions are unlikely to align with their core values.

But I can’t help but think of the missed opportunities. Most online brands would kill for their website traffic and customer list. The things you can do with that when combined with Facebook ads are pretty incredible.

[Tweet “Copyblogger recently killed their Facebook page. Was that a big mistake?”]

Why Copyblogger Says They Killed Their Page

Copyblogger had a Facebook fan base of approximately 38,000 people before they pulled the plug. This audience was built organically over the span of several years without the help of ads.

First, the page had an overwhelming number of junk fans. These are accounts with little to no personal status update activity that just go around ‘Liking’ Facebook pages. They’re essentially accounts tied to ‘click farms’ — ones paid pennies for every Facebook page they Like.

They say that their page “had an overwhelming number of junk fans.” There is no clarification or proof here regarding how many, but the claim is that many of their fans were bot and spam accounts from “other” countries. Copyblogger even went to lengths to remove these “junk fans” and prevent them from seeing future content.

While every page is bound to get some undesirable fans, it seems odd that a page that never spent a dime on advertising would have a significant problem. It’s easy to end up with a few spam accounts if you aren’t careful with your ad targeting.

It sure would be nice if we were able to take an inside look at the Copyblogger’s Facebook audience, right?

The page may no longer exist, but that doesn’t prevent me from doing a little bit of research on the “Copyblogger” interest using Audience Insights. This may not be a perfect exercise, but I have confidence that there is value here. While not all users that come up in this case will be a fan, I find that it lines up almost perfectly for most brands.

As evidence, let’s use my page as an example before we get started. When I enter the Jon Loomer Digital interest into Audience Insights, I find that there are between 35-40,000 Facebook users connected to that interest in the United States, Canada, Australia and United Kingdom (between 50.3% and 57.5%).

Since I manage the Jon Loomer Digital Page, I can also get a clear picture of the number of fans the page has in those countries. As you see here, that number is approximately 36,400 (52.3%), which lines up perfectly with the 35-40,000 figure reported for the Jon Loomer Digital interest.

Back to Copyblogger. The break-up article complained of a high concentration of fans in “undesirable” countries. Using Audience Insights, I see that between 20-25,000 (between 52.6% and 65.8%) of their fans came from the United States, Canada, Australia and United Kingdom. Note that this percentage is consistent with — if not higher than — my audience in those countries.

On the flip side, I only found that between 2,500 and 3,000 of their fans (between 6.6% and 7.9%) were coming from the “undesirable” countries they labeled: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia and Pakistan (I was unable to include Syria, but that would unlikely make much of a difference). Granted, they say they cleaned this up, but that’s not an outrageous number.

First of all, I think it’s dangerous to label all fans from those countries as “fakes,” “bots” or “undesirables.” Yes, studies have shown that there is a fake profile problem in some of these countries. That happens in the US as well. Not to mention India is one of the fastest growing REAL tech audiences (I do get a measurable amount of traffic and sales from India).

In fact, a little research shows that India is one of Copyblogger’s main sources of traffic. According to Quantcast, India provides 6% of their traffic (third behind the United States and United Kingdom). Alexa says that India represents 13.7% of all Copyblogger visitors, second only to the United States.

Regardless, let’s assume there’s truth to Copyblogger’s claim about those countries. My fan base includes 5,200 of such fans, or about 7.5% of my entire audience. Once again, consistent with what Copyblogger was seeing. Keep in mind that I do not deal with a major spam problem.

Moreover, Copyblogger complained about poor reach and engagement. I reach a high percentage of my fans organically. According to the AgoraPulse Barometer, I reach 41.4% of my fans on average with a given post, and also have an average organic reach of 40.5%.

While my Engagement Rate is slightly below average for a page my size (6.4% vs. 8.1%), I also don’t try to game the system with photos and other easy-click content. Lots of links!

I share this because my concentration of fans by country is actually quite similar to what Copyblogger was seeing. Yet I drive a great deal of traffic and sales with my Facebook page — organic and paid.

Further Research of the Copyblogger Audience

Let’s not stop here. I want to dig a bit deeper with Audience Insights to see if their fan base is representative of what you’d consider a Copyblogger audience to be.

Using Quantcast’s list of countries representing the Copyblogger audience as a guide, I entered 48 different countries to get as close to the 38,000 figure as I could (30-35k). I was then able to learn the following about the Copyblogger audience on Facebook…

1. There Are More Women than Men

When I started only with the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, this was even more pronounced (60% women). When I added the other 44 countries, this evened out a bit to 51% women and 49% men.

Both Alexa and Quantcast report that the typical Copyblogger reader is more likely to be a woman than the typical internet user (Alexa is at the top and Quantcast on the bottom):

2. They Are Highly Educated

According to Audience Insights, Copyblogger fans were more likely than the typical Facebook user to have attended college and far more likely to have attended grad school. In fact, only 8% stopped their education after high school.

Quantcast and Alexa agree.

3. They Like Other Marketing and Entrepreneur Pages

According to Audience Insights, following are the favorite pages of a typical Copyblogger fan:

1. Social Media Examiner
2. Seth Godin
3. Social Media Today
4. Inc. Magazine
5. Hubspot
6. Mashable
7. TechCrunch
8. Entrepreneur
9. Lifehacker
10. TED

While the list that Quantcast gives is a bit different, SocialMediaExaminer.com shows up second and SocialMediaToday.com is 10th. In fact, I’m #8!

4. About Half Are From the US

I covered this to a point already, but let’s dig deeper. According to Audience Insights, 48% of fans come from the United States. The rest of the top five are as follows:

• India – 5%
• United Kingdom – 5%
• Canada – 4%
• Australia – 4%

All other countries represent 2% or less.

The top five according to Quantcast:

1. United States – 48.78%
2. United Kingdom – 8.72%
3. India – 5.98%
4. Canada – 5.63%
5. Australia – 3.95%

Once again, no other countries over 2%. The results are eerily similar.

5. They Are Above-Average Earners

According to Audience Insights, Copyblogger fans in the US (the only country this data is available) made more money than the typical Facebook user. The $75-100k bracket skewed highest compared to the general Facebook audience. The under $50k crowd was practically nonexistent.

This is consistent with Quantcast, which reports that Copyblogger readers are far less likely than the typical internet user to make under $50,000 per year and far more likely to make more.

Maybe their fans weren’t engaging at the level Copyblogger expected. But based on this research, it’s quite clear that their Facebook fans lined up closely with their website visitors.

Facebook Drove Traffic to Copyblogger

I found it interesting that Alexa reports Facebook as the second highest referrer to Copyblogger, at 3.1%.

Granted, 3.1% isn’t a huge number. But considering Copyblogger gets around 450k monthly uniques according to Quantcast, that’s about 14,000 of their monthly visitors — and potentially 25,000 of their total page views.

Check out a couple of these quotes regarding Copyblogger’s view of Twitter…

Copyblogger has found value actively engaging with its community through Twitter and Google+.

Twitter is an amazing platform at both the brand level and for many of the individuals in the company (plus, you retweet posts like nobody’s business).

How valuable are those retweets from Twitter?? Facebook nearly triples Twitter’s referrals to Copyblogger.

Why Copyblogger May Have Struggled

Copyblogger was able to build an audience of 38,000 people without spending a dime on Facebook ads. That’s a testament to the strength of their brand.

They made an assumption that the reason for this was fake accounts. Like many other brands that struggle with Facebook, Copyblogger used the Veritasium “Facebook Fraud” video as the smoking gun. It provided all the validation they needed that their failures were due to spam profiles (make sure to read my response to that video).

Based on my research of their page, I find it unlikely that this was a major contributor to their issues. Instead, it looks like their Facebook fans line up quite nicely with their website visitors in nearly every way. In fact, a country they label as spam-ridden, India, represents no more of their Facebook audience than their website audience.

First, I am going to take their word for it that their efforts weren’t working. It’s difficult, though, since there was no mention of how many website referrals and sales came from their Facebook posts.

But I’ll take their word for it that they struggled to get any meaningful engagement with their Facebook posts. Their could be an easy explanation for this: Stale fans.

I don’t know how long the Copyblogger Facebook page has been in existence, but since they are smart marketers I’ll assume that it’s been up for several years. Since brand pages have been around since November of 2007, I’d bet that Copyblogger was early to the party and had their page for more than six years.

While 38,000 fans is a lot, that’s not much growth over a period of six or seven years — particularly for a website that gets 800,000 page views per month (according to Quantcast).

Think for a moment about the pages you have liked over the years. How many of those pages do you still care about? How many do you still interact with?

The truth is that people get bored. And when you stop interacting with content from a certain friend or brand, you’re going to stop seeing content from that source.

The typical Facebook fan is highly engaged for the first 30 days or so. But they get bored. They pay less attention over time. And eventually, your content may completely disappear for them — and they’re okay with that.

Considering their page was likely around for at least six years, think about how many stale fans that includes. Fans that liked the page years ago but may no longer care.

While the audience itself may have been plenty relevant, Copyblogger did little to keep a fresh group of fans coming through. How would they view an email list of 38,000 subscribers built over six or seven years? Would the old subscribers be as active as the new ones?

While I recommend ads to build a fresh audience, traffic and their email list may have been all that was needed to keep a new set of fans coming through.

UPDATED: Why Copyblogger May Have Struggled

Big thanks to reader Adomas Baltagalvis who shared the following in the comments below…

The first time I came across their Facebook page was probably about a year ago, and I was quite shocked about how poorly it was managed: no interaction with the fans, only sharing links, but even those were not rich links, just article headlines with a link in the text post – if that’s the trend for the past 5 years, how could they expect any engagement from their fans? The author agreed that there was no real strategy for Facebook before she joined, and although things improved later on, the damage was already done.

If this is the way Copyblogger was posting to their Facebook page prior to the three month strategy revamp, it’s no wonder they weren’t succeeding. They had the right audience, but they were boring the hell out of them.

This is a great example of the damage that can be done if you don’t post engaging content. Because they were so boring, Facebook undoubtedly stopped showing their content to the majority of their fans. The only way to re-engage them likely would have been with ads.

I’m disappointed that this wasn’t mentioned in their explanation for shutting down their page. It is a huge factor that contributed to their struggles.

What Copyblogger Could Have Done: Kept the Page Alive

I understand that Copyblogger was frustrated with the impact they were making on Facebook. But why delete the page entirely?

While I trust that Copyblogger’s intentions were good and pure, I’ve seen so many brands make similar public moves with their Facebook pages that it often makes me skeptical. Other brands get a ton of traffic and attention for announcing they’ll shut down their Facebook page (according to Quantcast, Copyblogger had a pretty big traffic spike on October 17 — the day they announced their split with Facebook).

How often do you see this with a Twitter or Google+ account? I get far more from my Facebook efforts, but I’d never consider the option of shutting down my other accounts. What’s the point?

I get dedicating fewer resources to the page. I get investing less time and money to keep it going. But deleting it forever? All 38,000 fans gone? Why?

What if something changes that would be a huge benefit to them? What if someone convinces them that they do indeed need to use Facebook? Well, now they need to start over.

And I assume they previously used the fb.com/copyblogger username. They’ll need a new one now. And they’ll need to start from scratch.

Sure, those fans may be stale. But I just don’t understand the need for such dramatic action.

What Copyblogger Could Have Done: Built an Engaged Audience

As mentioned earlier, public info found on Quantcast tells us that Copyblogger is getting around 450,000 unique visitors and 800,000 page views per month. Oh man. That’s a ton of traffic to work with!

They could have built their audience very easily and inexpensively with Facebook ads. With that many monthly visitors, they could have run ads targeting only those who visited their website recently — even within the past 24 hours — asking them to like the page (using Website Custom Audiences).

I also assume they have well over 100,000 email subscribers. I can only guess how large that list is, but Social Media Examiner boasts a list of nearly 300,000 people.

That’s a nice, large group of people who would be very likely to want to engage on Facebook. Creating an email Custom Audience and running ads to those people would have done the trick.

What Copyblogger Could Have Done: Increased Website Traffic

I personally have a routine for driving website traffic with Facebook ads. Copyblogger surely could have benefited as well.

They publish a new blog post five days per week. They could have promoted each new blog post to fans, email subscribers and recent website visitors.

In fact, they undoubtedly have blog posts broken down by category. They could have promoted new blog posts to users who have read similar blog posts in the past to reach a highly relevant group.

What Copyblogger Could Have Done: Built Their Email List

Copyblogger has 16 free ebooks that they could have promoted with Facebook ads. They could have promoted them to fans or general website visitors.

But even better, using Website Custom Audiences they could have promoted the relevant ebook based on the page a user visited. Maybe they visited the landing page for that ebook. Or they visited a blog post that was closely related to the same topic.

And of course, they could have excluded those who already opted in to prevent waste and keep the ads as relevant as possible.

What Copyblogger Could Have Done: Sold Their Products

Copyblogger also has a $399 annual membership called Authority. I’m sure they’ve developed a great email funnel that they use to drive purchases of that membership.

Why not do the same thing with Facebook ads? They could have targeted those who visited their website generally. Or they could have targeted those who opted in to their email list, but haven’t yet become a member.

Whatever email messaging approach they use to push the upsell could have been used to target the same audience with Facebook ads.

Your Turn

Again, I have an enormous amount of respect for Copyblogger. They’re often ahead of the trends (in fact, this follows their controversial move to turn off blog comments in March).

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

The post What Copyblogger Could Have Done With Its Facebook Page appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The above video was originally posted in the Power Hitters Club members area. The “Ask Jon” segment is for members only, with Jon answering member questions in the form of a video.

>> GO HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE POWER HITTERS CLUB <<

The following question was asked by member Alan Martin:

I would find it invaluable to hear more about your story, how you went from leaving the corporate world to becoming a Facebook ads guru in less than three years. My business has been going for about 4 years and I am breaking-even but I need to take my business to the next level. It’s quite frustrating that after this amount of time I am not further ahead, so it would be great to benefit from your experience to get some inspiration for my business. Regards Alan

This is a story I love to tell. While the video above does a good job of summarizing in about seven minutes, I wanted to write out a more detailed story.

[Tweet “It takes experimentation, failure, investment and a little bit of luck to build a business…”]

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

How It Started

On August 18, 2011, I was laid off for the second time in under three years.

Beginning in the summer of 2008, I left (crazily under my own will) a dream job with the NBA. It actually wasn’t that crazy because we wanted to return to our quiet life in Colorado, and New Jersey was far from quiet.

But I had no idea the risk I was taking by leaving a job that provided so much security and entertainment for three eventful seasons.

I first worked for a start-up fantasy games development company. This was a natural transition since I oversaw fantasy games for the NBA. That lasted six months before I was laid off.

After doing some consulting for a few months, I accepted an opportunity to be VP of Strategic Marketing for the American Cancer Society. Tough time to take an experimental position for a non-profit, right as the economy was about to tank.

That led me to my second layoff in the fall of 2011.

My Priorities

One reason I left the NBA was because while I loved the job, it separated me from my family. I often spent two hours per day commuting, and I worked long hours. Though I loved every minute of it, taking the job was a selfish move (we pulled up roots from Colorado so I could take the job), and the time away from family conflicted with my core values.

Back in 2003, our oldest son was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare form of childhood cancer. The prognosis is not typically good, but he was one of the lucky ones. Now 11 years later, Michael is a happy, healthy and AMAZING 13-year-old boy.

But that experience has a way of changing your priorities. I suddenly saw new value in every second of the day. Anytime spent in traffic was time wasted.

I wanted to spend more time with my kids. See them grow. Coach their baseball teams. But these things were impossible with a commute.

Before the NBA job and soon after Michael’s diagnosis, I took a job closer to home so that my commute was no more than two minutes. It was the perfect situation.

So when I became jobless, I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want. I wasn’t going to move my family again. And I wasn’t going to take a job downtown.

That, of course, limited my options. There was very little I could do close by in the ‘burbs of my neighborhood.

I could get back into consulting (which I would do for a while). Or I could start my own business (which seemed insane).

My Experience with Facebook

While with the NBA in 2007, we partnered with this up-and-coming company called Facebook. I had no exposure to it otherwise. A young employee once tried — unsuccessfully — to help me understand what Facebook was and convince me to do something with them. But luckily someone else was listening and set up the partnership.

We partnered with Facebook to build an NBA Playoffs application, before you could create your own apps. Facebook just repurposed their March Madness app that was so successful for their college crowd.

I was also the first (or one of the first) admin for an NBA Facebook group — before there were pages. Yeah, that makes me feel really old.

Needless to say, I fell in love with the platform. I was amazed by being able to reconnect with so many people I hadn’t heard from in over 20 years. I became an immediate Facebook addict.

I was comfortable with Facebook as a user, and I also had the experience of using Facebook for a brand dating back to the earliest stages of brands on Facebook.

The Business That Wasn’t a Business

I’d like to say that when I was laid off, I immediately started a thriving business. That I was well-trained and prepared and knew exactly what I needed to do.

I had no freaking clue.

The one thing I did know how to do — and enjoyed — was write. So I started a very basic website (built on a free theme) and started writing.

I wrote a lot, though I didn’t hit a routine until the start of 2012. Beginning then, I started writing nearly every day of the week.

I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I wrote more than 300 blog posts in that first year. I lacked focused during the first six months, but I started writing mainly about Facebook marketing beginning the end of February in 2012.

But it was far from a business. It was a way to get my name out there and keep myself busy. And really, I was far from busy.

I made no money for four months. Nothing at all. And when I started making some money for my site with AdSense and affiliates, we’re not talking about a business here. I was bringing in a few hundred dollars (maybe $1,000) per month.

That was my “business.”

Eventually I would do some consulting. But I didn’t start bringing in any true revenue through the site (sponsors and products) until the end of 2012 — a year after the journey began.

How I Built My Brand With Facebook

When I started my website, you may be surprised that I didn’t immediately start a Facebook page. Well, keep in mind that I didn’t see myself as a business, so that wasn’t high on the priority list.

In fact, I was a bit uncomfortable even when I started my page. I didn’t truly have a business yet, and I felt like self-branded Facebook pages were only for celebrities.

But I created a Facebook page anyway, and committed to it.

I had to be committed because it was a freaking ghost town at first. I invited all of my friends and family first (big mistake), and people quickly got bored of my content. I wrote 39 posts in the first month, and 26 never received a single like, comment or share.

It got so pathetic that I recorded a “thank you” video for my fans to celebrate the milestone of reaching 65 likes. Yeah, a milestone!

Well, guess what? Not one person commented on, liked or shared that video when it was initially released.

I didn’t quit, though. I had nothing better to do, so I carried on.

I used my Facebook page to share my content, but also to educate my target audience. I’d typically share my blog posts as well as articles from others to provide value.

Facebook ads were part of my strategy, but they certainly weren’t at the top of the list. I had no money. In fact, we were quickly falling into debt. So if I wasn’t running free ads from a coupon I dug up, I was running ads for $1 per day.

In the first year or so, my priority was simply finding people who would listen. I ran ads at a low level to build my audience, and I shared blog posts to drive traffic.

Of course, as revenues started to increase and Facebook’s advertising power improved, I began investing more and more into Facebook ads. I now spend double on Facebook ads in one month what I spent in that entire first year.

I still use Facebook ads to build my audience. Relevance is key, of course, because fans convert. So I’m always focused on attracting those who already know me to my page first.

Every new blog post is also promoted to my fans and my website visitors. This helps increase my website traffic. And by increasing my website traffic, the pool of people who know me and I can target later grows.

Facebook ads have also served an important role in building my email list. Whether it was giving away an ebook or running a free webinar, I would run ads on Facebook to build that ever-important list.

And of course, Facebook has been a big part of growing revenue. There are certainly indirect results from simply building a large, engaged audience. But I also use ads to target fans, website visitors and those who have abandoned my landing pages to drive sales.

I learned plenty here. I learned that how Facebook works and doesn’t work is largely common sense.

People are on Facebook to chat with their friends and family. While they may have liked your page, they usually don’t care that much whether or not they see your content.

And people on Facebook don’t like being interrupted by sleazy sales pitches from people they don’t know. These ads stick out like a sore thumb. And it makes perfect sense why they don’t work.

That’s why I focus primarily on reaching and selling to those who already know me. Through a four-step sales funnel, they already trust me. So they are less likely to be put off by a sales pitch, and are far more likely to buy.

The Secrets to My Business Growth

As I look back on these past three years, I find it hard to believe how far this business has come. It went from not really being a business at all to a revenue-generating machine. But it certainly didn’t happen overnight.

Following are a few keys…

Niche Focus: Today, I’m seen as the “Facebook Ads Guy.” If you have a question about Facebook ads or Power Editor — or specifically about advanced Facebook advertising — you likely come to my site.

This happens because of years of work building that brand and authority. I initially cast a wide net, trying to be everything for everybody. And then even when I focused on Facebook marketing, I was doing what countless others were doing just as well.

But there was a need. No one was talking about advanced Facebook marketing topics. And beyond the beginner subjects of building likes and boosting posts, very few people were writing about ads.

Writing about advanced Facebook advertising was more than just realizing a need. It was taking advantage of an opportunity.

It took me a while, but picking this group made a whole lot of sense. I could write generally about Facebook marketing, but that attracted beginners and people who refused to spend a dime on Facebook ads.

By writing about advanced Facebook advertising topics, I was catering to people who were already investing in their business. These people would be willing to spend money to make sure they weren’t wasting their investment.

Writing A LOT: This was critical. Today, Google drives an insane amount of traffic to my site. Even though I now write only one post per week, I still get 8-10k referrals from Google on a typical day.

This happened because of all of that writing early on about a very focused topic. Over and over again. I trained Google to see my site as the go-to source for Facebook marketing.

I am not an SEO guy. There were no tricks. I just wrote a ton of content about a single topic.

Marcus Sheridan was my guide here. Through reading his content, I learned to write content that answers the questions of my target audience. That approach simply works.

Experimenting: Hugely important for someone like me who had no clue what he was doing. I’ve tried so many things in three years. Many of those experiments failed. But you won’t find what works without failing a few hundred times first.

List Building: Stupidly, I didn’t start an email list until my website was about six months old. But it’s the lifeblood of my business.

While I’ve given away ebooks and run webinars in the past, I’ve largely built my list through a very simple “subscribe to my newsletter” approach. It’s a lazy approach, but when you get the type of traffic I’ve been getting, it works.

Still, it’s become painfully clear that opportunities were missed here. So I’ve begun putting more focus on list building and lead generation.

You’ll see this with my new Power Editor ebook (opt-in forms everywhere!) and image dimensions PDF. I now get several hundred new email addresses added to my list every day.

Products: That list is what drives sales. But first you need something to sell!

My first products were awful. I set up a “Facebook Page Review” service that was way underpriced and didn’t scale. I had a small group workshop that was again underpriced. But they were something.

Huge obstacles here were technology and the unknown. I had no confidence in launching a product. But you just have to do it and see what works.

The most important product launch was my first Power Editor training course. I didn’t even have a product when I first launched it as pre-pay. And the sales — amazingly to me at the time — came in.

Without that experiment, I’d have no idea that the focus on my business should be training courses. I recently launched the update to the Power Editor course, and I’ve launched others and have many planned for the future.

Monthly Recurring Revenue: While the courses are great, they represent one-off purchases. As a result, I’d see big spikes and valleys in revenue. To fix this, monthly recurring revenue was necessary.

The Power Hitters Club was launched. This allowed me to create a private community for those most engaged at $97 per month. It’s been the glue for my business.

Investing: I once prided myself on spending so little in the first year of my business. So, so stupid.

Doing it right costs money. Software is needed. Advertising is required. It’s not unheard of for me to now spend $10k in a month on my business.

Growth doesn’t happen without investing. And that monthly expense will continue to increase if I want this business to keep growing.

Delegating: You can’t do it all yourself. Stop thinking you can.

It took a solid two years until I started paying someone to do work for me. Now my team includes people responsible for the following:

• Hosting
• Design
• Audio Editing
• Video Editing
• Infusionsoft
• Customer Service/Community Management
• Business Management

That’s just the start. More people will be needed.

Scaling: The systems I had in place a year and two years ago could never sustain my business now.

I outgrew AWeber in favor of Infusionsoft. I outgrew Premise in favor of Customer Hub. I outgrew unpredictable webinar software for GoToWebinar.

The list goes on and on.

But it was also important to create products that could be served to hundreds or thousands of people. There was no way I could help that many people with my old products.

Planning: This business is constantly evolving. My business manager keeps me on task. Standing still is dangerous.

The future consists of more public speaking, many more training courses, masterminds, an agency and software.

Advice to Alan

That’s a long, long story about how my business came to be. Hopefully this helps Alan. But here is the bottom line…

Don’t quit, Alan. Don’t stand still. Fail like crazy. Experiment. Find what works and what doesn’t. INVEST in your business. Hire people to help you, even if it’s one part time. Create products that scale. And if you can, create a TON of content.

Your Turn

What’s your story, and what advice would you give to Alan?

The post My Story: How a Business Was Built in Three Years appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Facebook recently made updates to their API and SDKs, but one of the most impactful changes was buried at the bottom of the announcement:

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page.

The change went largely unnoticed for the first 24 hours or so. I’ve read responses ranging from “no big deal” to “freak-out mode.” In this post, I’m going to help you understand what this change means and how it will impact you as a Facebook marketer.

[Tweet “Did you hear? You can no longer like-gate on Facebook. Here’s what you need to know as a marketer…”]

What It Means

If you use apps like ShortStack, Heyo, TabSite and many, many more, you may be using a like-gating (also known as “fan-gating”) feature. It works by showing different content to fans and non-fans.

Let’s use a contest for Brand A as an example. To make it work, you need to provide different views whether a user is a fan (“Click to enter!”) or non-fan (“like first to enter!”). When you visit Brand A’s custom app, Facebook will check to see whether or not you are a fan and present the view accordingly.

Well, this is no longer going to work. If you already have an app that is using this functionality, it will continue to like-gate until November 5. After that, the like-gating functionality of the app will stop working.

Like-gating functionality will not work for any new apps created going forward.

Why Facebook Did It

Well, let’s take it straight from Facebook:

To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Facebook wants users to like brand pages because they actually “like” them, not because they were promised some freebie or contest entry for doing it.

Ultimately, Facebook says this will improve the experience for both users (they will see content they actually want to see) and advertisers (targeting by interests is more effective).

Why It Makes Sense

Look, I have used like-gating. I constantly run ads to build relevant likes, and one approach I took in the past was offering my free ebook in exchange for a like. I found that to be very effective.

I personally think this approach works. I am giving highly relevant content to people in exchange for a like. If they like that content, they should also like seeing my posts in their News Feed.

Unfortunately, this may be the exception when it comes to like-gating. The majority of brands using like-gating do it in connection to a contest. Many offer prizes (think iPads) that aren’t closely connected to the brand. Or it could be in exchange for coupons or even a contest with a relevant prize.

The main issue with this form of like-gating is that it is not in exchange for content. There is no implied desire to see that brand’s content in their News Feed.

On one hand, like-gating can be compared to website lead magnets where a valuable piece of content is offered in exchange for an email address. In either case, the value of that opt-in may be less than if provided without incentive. But the lead magnet is certainly an effective method of list building.

The difference, though, is that the negative impact of like-gating goes far beyond your number of likes.

Facebook tells us that the average user would see 1,500 stories in a given day. Facebook’s algorithms bring that number down to a more manageable 300. In order for Facebook to be a desirable place for users, the best and most relevant content needs to be surfaced.

Facebook uses many signals to determine what users see. But like-gating confuses those signals. Does a user really want to see content from that brand? It’s not always clear.

This move is aimed at preserving the value of the like. If users are liking pages for the purpose of getting something rather than because they actually want to see the content from that brand, it can harm the user experience. A bad user experience means users spend less time on Facebook.

Less time on Facebook — and fewer users — also negatively impacts advertisers. The implied reason is obvious — advertisers need users to be online to target them.

But preserving the value of the like is extremely important for advertisers as well. If I target users who like Brand B’s page, I do so because I think they have a common interest. But if Brand B built their audience through nothing but contests and giveaways, the value of that targeting is minimized.

That’s why I’ve written before about the “death” of interest targeting. It’s impossible to be 100% confident in the quality of another brand’s fan base. They may have acquired their audience by buying likes, running poorly targeted ads or by constantly running giveaways.

Why It May Be Too Late

This all sounds great, but I can’t help but think Facebook is a few years behind on this change to make much of a difference.

There are well over 1 Billion Facebook users who already like dozens, if not hundreds, of pages. Audiences are well established. Implementing this change will do nothing about the people who were incentivized to like pages in the past.

While this should be a positive change, the increase in quality will be a drop in the bucket. It should hardly be noticeable, particularly for larger pages.

I appreciate the move, and it may actually help the user experience. If a user rarely interacts with a brand, they won’t see that brand’s content anyway. But I doubt it will do much of anything for advertisers.

If I target fans of a particular page, I’m not able to only target “actively engaged” fans. I target all fans, and that will include those who were incentivized to like the page.

But targeting based on activity seems like a pretty darn good idea, doesn’t it??

Likes Still Matter

One common response to this change I’ve read is that it doesn’t matter because you shouldn’t be focused on likes anyway.

I find this to be way off base.

The argument is focused first on the fact that Organic Reach is down for most brands, so the value of a like is diminished. While Organic Reach may be down for some (not all — including me), brands are still reaching a lot of people for free. That remains significant.

Likes still matter.

Additionally, the act of a “like” helps marketers bucket users for more effective targeting. If you build your audience with relevant people, this gives you a highly effective group of people to target when building your email list, driving traffic to your website or selling.

I’ve seen it over and over again: Fans convert at a very high rate. I see this through organic content and with ads.

Now What?

This isn’t the end of the world. Embrace that your fans will be those who care most about your brand. But also accept that it will now be harder to increase those numbers, particularly if you previously thrived with contests and other like-gating.

No matter what the method of increasing your audience, you need to establish a compelling value proposition. Why should someone like your page? The “incentive” may be as simple as providing the most thorough, helpful or entertaining information in your niche.

Don’t panic. Increasing likes still matters. But it may be time to get more creative with your methods.

Additionally, you should still use third party apps to build your email list. So instead of requiring users like your page to get the incentive, you are collecting an email address. This is allowed!

Your Turn

How does the loss of like-gating impact your approach and Facebook marketing in general?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post No More Facebook Like-Gating: What It Means and Why You Should Care appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: As an experiment, I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Facebook recently announced that they are rolling out the long-tested feature of surfacing posts from pages users don’t like that tag pages they do. I considered writing a long response to this development. And then I realized something…

My response is virtually identical to any Facebook feature change that impacts what users see in the News Feed: Brands will abuse it to the point of rendering it useless.

The end result is that, though the change was meant to help brands, it will ultimately be reversed or countered when brands take it too far.

Examples of Brands Screwing Up Facebook

Let’s think through just a handful of ways brands continue to use information learned about the News Feed and completely screw everything up…

1. Text Updates: There was a time when text updates received more Reach than other content types. The reason for this was that Facebook, always wanting to encourage engagement, noticed users are more likely to create their own content when they see text updates.

The problem? This wasn’t true of brand text updates. Why? Because brands used them in a completely different way than users did.

When a user just wanted to tell their friends how they were feeling or what they were doing, they shared a text update. Brands, on the other hand, went out of their way to share everything as a text update to improve their Reach.

The result was ugly updates like this one that included a pasted URL…

Brands destroyed the use of text updates. And Facebook needed to adjust their algorithm accordingly. Now we’re seeing that the Reach on text updates is down about 40%.

Of course, some brands took this to mean they should stop using text updates altogether. In other words, they just don’t get it…

2. Memes and Unnecessary Photos: Before text updates, sharing everything as a photo was the biggest craze.

Once again, the action of sharing a photo wasn’t the problem. It was brands going out of their way to share photos unnecessarily in order to artificially inflate Reach or engagement that was the core issue.

So we started seeing brands share everything as a photo. Photo boxes with nothing but text in them. Screen shots of blog posts with a URL pasted into the description. Endless cat photos and other memes.

The goal here, in most cases, wasn’t to provide value. Brands were putting a metric ahead of their content. They assumed that any photo would get more Reach and engagement, and that no matter what it was users would prefer it as long as it was in the form of an image.

Of course, users don’t share everything as a photo. But brands were forcing the use of photos unnaturally, which completely screwed up the News Feed.

3. Lame CTAs: Study after study has been released indicating that if you want a desired action, you simply need to ask for it. Psychology and stuff.

I don’t completely disagree with this. I understand the power of calls to action. But I also know how annoying bad ones are.

Every brand started using lame CTAs in their posts. “Click LIKE if you’re happy it’s Friday.” “Share if puppies are cute.” “Comment if poverty is bad.”

Here’s the brand’s dilemma: Most Facebook users are on the network to engage with friends and family. People don’t talk like this. Only brands do. And when brands do, these posts stick out unnaturally.

But of course you want the engagement. You want the click. We just need to be far more creative — and more conscious of how users prefer to engage on Facebook.

4. Get Notifications: Back around the time brands found out that ONLY 16% of their fans were seeing a single post, the Get Notifications option was released that allowed users to subscribe to alerts whenever a brand published new content.

The result? Yeah, I’m sure you know what happened. Brands started sharing whiny posts that went a little something like this…

You aren’t seeing all of my posts! Facebook is keeping us from reaching 84% of you. YOU CAN GET AROUND THIS! Just click that drop-down thing and select Get Notifications so you never miss one of our updates EVER AGAIN!

Do you know how many people actually followed your instructions and decided to get notifications? Probably very, very few. Likely fewer than the number of people who unliked your page as a result.

It’s very rare that a brand will produce content that’s so good that I would be upset if I missed a single post. In fact, no brand exists for me.

5. Hashtags: Very few people use hashtags on Facebook. But when the feature was launched, do you know who used it more than anyone else? Brands.

And why do you think this was? No, it wasn’t because it added any value to the post. The only motivation was to reach more people than they do normally. Evil Facebook was keeping them from reaching all of their fans, so they might as well hijack some discussions through hashtags.

The result was posts cluttered with unnecessary hashtags. You’d rarely see this from users. But brands went nuts with it.

I won’t go so far as to say brands ruined the hashtag on Facebook. It never really got off the ground (at least so far). But they are certainly slowing the feature’s growth.

And Now… Page Tagging?

So now the latest shiny object that distracts brands is page tagging.

Facebook provides the following scenario:

• User likes the Dwight Howard page
• User doesn’t like the Bleacher Report page
• Bleacher Report creates a post about and tagging Dwight Howard
• User then sees post in their News Feed

This is actually something I’ve seen in my News Feed for a while. It has worked quite well because it wasn’t public knowledge that this happened — or that brands could take advantage of it.

But now that the feature is official? I expect the worst.

Some will continue to use it for good. They’ll tag a page to provide attribution for a link they are sharing. This is the way it should be used.

But you can also expect to see brands randomly tagging big brands with the grand plans of reaching their larger audience. This will help those big brands, but it’s unlikely to move the needle at all for the small brands tagging them.

You see, Facebook’s learned their lesson. They know they can’t trust brands. So not every post that tags a brand you like will appear in your News Feed. Those posts will first need to be highly relevant to both audiences and receive a ton of engagement.

So I don’t expect this to be effective at all. But that hasn’t stopped brands from abusing features in the past, all in the name of the almighty Reach metric.

It’s Time We Learn Our Lesson

In the process of chasing Reach and putting a metric ahead of value, brands are becoming less and less interesting on Facebook. In fact, a recent survey suggests that 68% of users never or hardly ever pay attention to brand posts on Facebook.

Now, I’m the first to question results from surveys since they rarely reflect reality of actions. But I do believe there’s truth in this.

Brands complain that they don’t reach all of their fans with a single post. They do everything they can to game the system. They assume that a “like” is an opt-in and that users are furious if they don’t see every post.

But the reality is that most users just don’t care. And in fact, if you’re chasing Reach instead of focusing on providing valuable content that your target audience actually cares about, they probably care even less about you than the typical brand.

Users aren’t robots. They aren’t going to automatically engage with you or buy your stuff just because you used a text update or a photo or a hashtag or a tag or a CTA. If your marketing doesn’t work on Facebook, it may just be because you completely suck at it.

The Root of the Problem

If you think everyone who likes your page wants to see all of your content, you are part of the problem.

If you obsess over Reach and treat users as robots who will automatically engage if you post a particular way, you are part of the problem.

People aren’t on Facebook to engage with brands. Accept this. They are on Facebook to engage with friends and family.

That doesn’t mean brands can’t be successful on Facebook. The complete opposite. But it separates the brands who get it from those who don’t.

If you want to reach users on Facebook, treat users as people. Understand what they like. Find out how you can make their lives better with your content. Act accordingly.

Watch Video

Here’s a video podcast version…

Your Turn

Am I off base here? Are bad marketers ruining the News Feed?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Did Something and Marketers Will Screw it Up appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: As an experiment, I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

You’ve undoubtedly seen the following video from Veritasium called “Facebook Fraud.” If you haven’t yet, please watch it below…

It’s a well produced video put together by a very smart guy outlining why Facebook ads are a waste of money. He cited three main examples why, and I’ll dig into those in a minute.

Not surprisingly, I’ve had dozens of people send me this video. If nothing else, I’m beyond impressed by their ability to create a viral video (and of course, I’m contributing to that now!).

I’m not writing this post to rip apart the video’s author or to say it’s entirely wrong. He represents a viewpoint that is very common, and it’s something that deserves to be heard and addressed.

While I disagree with the conclusion, that doesn’t make the video itself false.

Given the response the video has gotten — and the repeated questions I’m getting about it — I felt it was important I respond in some way. So in this post, I’m going to do the following:

• Recap the major points of the video
• Explore common ground
• Voice my issues with the video
• Provide my own stats and history with Facebook ads

The Facebook Fraud Video

The video addresses three main examples…

First, the Virtual Bagel experiment from 2012.

Remember this? BBC Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones created this useless Facebook page to test the value of a page like. He intentionally created a page with (hopefully) no value to find out whether you could still use ads to generate fans.

After paying $100 for ads, the page ended up with more than 3,000 fans (there are more than 4,000 a year and a half later). His ads were targeted at users in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines (note that the video doesn’t mention Russia, India or Malaysia).

Per Cellan-Jones’ article in 2012, here is the extent of targeting:

I narrowed it down slightly by targeting under 45-year-olds interested in cookery and consumer electronics, but was told that would still give me a potential audience of 112 million customers.

Virtually nobody in the US or UK liked his page. When broadly targeted, the ad received a click-through rate of 0.55%. When narrowed to only the UK, that percentage dwindled to 0.059%.

This underscored the problem with targeting at particular countries, raising doubts about the quality of fans there.

Second, Facebook Advertising for the Veritasium page.

At the 2:07 point, the author of the video continues…

So did they delete all of the fake likes? Nope. Not even close. I know because most of the likes on my Facebook page are not genuine.

He explains how in May of 2012, he received emails from Facebook with a $50 coupon code to try Facebook ads. So he did.

As he started running ads, his audience grew exponentially. He went from 2,000 fans to more than 130,000 today (though it sounds like he had just over 100,000 related to the study).

He found that as his audience grew, engagement did not. If fact, he felt as though engagement may have even declined.

Make sure to check out his graph at the 3:13 point where he notes that 80,000 of his likes (or what he says is 75%) come from developing countries. This results in 1% of his page’s engagement.

At the 5:20 point:

I should reiterate, I never bought fake likes. I used Facebook’s legitimate advertising.

He is never clear about the targeting of this ads. But since he doesn’t make claims to the contrary, the argument appears to be that ads broadly targeted at these countries brought meaningless likes that didn’t result in engagement.

Finally, the Virtual Cat experiment.

The author of the video then decided to run his own experiment. So he created another useless Facebook page called Virtual Cat. He then spent $25 targeting cat lovers in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

The result of that $25: 262 page likes. While details weren’t provided, he says that many of the likes were from people liking thousands of pages.

He also referred to a single post that he published on a Friday afternoon that reached only eight people and received no “engagement” (defined in this case, apparently, as comments, likes and shares).

On Click Farms

Early in the video, it’s mentioned that Facebook likes can be bought in two ways: Legitimately and illegitimately. You can “buy” them through ads or pay click farms and break Facebook’s rules.

The video describes how you can buy 1,000 likes for $70, and that workers are paid $1 for every 1,000 like clicks. These services have users set up in countries like India, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Note that the “legitimate” way of buying likes is through Facebook ads. But in the examples this video provides from 2012, those ads were targeted at countries known for click farms.

Some pages do this intentionally to bulk up their likes. Some do it unknowingly. In 2012, I suspect they innocently paid for these ads thinking they were getting quality fans.

These days, of course, we know better.

Where We Agree on Concerns

While I have issues with the conclusions of the video, what he shared does underscore a very real problem. Even in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, remnants of these click farms exist.

And as I outlined when Optimized CPM first came out, the problem is that Facebook is going to target your ad at people most likely to perform your desired action. In some cases, that could be at people who have liked thousands of pages.

Granted, that is mitigated quite a bit with proper targeting (not just by country), but fake profiles still exist.

My Issues with the Video

Let me go point by point on my major issues with the video before I get to my own stats.

Again, I appreciate the video and the conversations it starts. But a different perspective from someone who has seen incredible success with Facebook ads is necessary.

The Core of the Argument is Based on Results from 2012
We’ve been through this regarding the Virtual Bagel page before. This is old news.

The Facebook ad feature set has changed significantly since then. These features either didn’t exist or were unlikely to be used during these tests:

• Conversion Tracking
• Custom Audiences
• Lookalike Audiences
• Website Custom Audiences
• FBX
• Partner Categories
• Facebook’s new ad reports

If you still use Facebook ads as if it’s 2012, you deserve the results you get.

I felt it strange that so much of the video was focused on something so long ago. We should have learned our lessons since then. If you target well (and use Power Editor), you’re much more likely to find success.

The fact that poorly targeted ads in 2012 didn’t work shouldn’t be a surprise. The two examples weren’t the only ones. I’m included among those who screwed up (see later in this post about my stories).

About Those Click Farms…
The video talks about how click farms are prevalent in countries like India, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Remember that Virtual Bagel experiment? It was considered an indictment on Facebook ads because no one in the US or UK clicked on the ad while also targeting and getting likes from India, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

We as readers and viewers should completely understand why that page ended up with a bunch of undesirable likes. It targeted users in countries that are known to be a problem.

And shouldn’t the fact that so few people from the US and UK liked a worthless page be an indication that targeting in those countries may actually be okay?

I guess the argument is that those click farms are a problem and shouldn’t exist. Well, that’s true. But by now, we should all know they exist, and we should also know how to avoid them the best we can.

The author goes on to say that this is reflected in his own page, which is littered with fake likes. He provides a graph showing that 80,000 of his fans were from undesirable countries who provided less than 1% of his engagement.

Again, he isn’t clear here, but it sounds like he targeted ads at these countries. If he didn’t, I fully expect he would have made a very strong point to the contrary.

You get what you pay for. Yes, click farms exist. Yes, some countries are much less desirable than others. You should expect the quality of your audience to follow.

Small Sample Sizes
The most compelling argument was one built on the smallest of sample sizes: The $25 in ads for Virtual Cat.

I wish he would have done more here. I wish he would have spent more money and provided more details regarding the number of fans who liked X number of pages.

This is a phenomenon I have seen before, so I don’t doubt that it can happen. But I would have loved to see more details on how bad it was in his experiment. It just isn’t clear, which weakens the overall argument of the video.

Targeting
We’ve established that poorly targeted ads will get you nowhere. This is precisely why I repeatedly tell you not to use the quick fix ads tools of Boost Post and Promote Page. Use Power Editor.

You no longer need to broadly target a country based on age and gender (recall that the Virtual Bagel ad targeted 112 Million people!). You can target based on the basic things like interests and even buying histories (Partner Categories).

But do you know how you can really avoid any of these issues? Focus most of your budget on the people you know care about your brand.

That’s why I talk about targeting your email list with Custom Audiences and targeting your website visitors with Website Custom Audiences (and previously with FBX).

If You Target Ads Poorly, They Won’t Work

None of the conclusions should be a surprise here.

If you target countries that aren’t relevant to you and are known to be havens for click farms, you will end up with a bunch of worthless likes. This isn’t 2012 anymore. You can no longer play ignorant to this.

Likewise, if you target ads very broadly at “cat lovers” don’t expect to get high quality fans. In fact, don’t expect any actual “cat lovers” to respond when you create a completely unrelated post about a scientific experiment.

Your most relevant audience is your actual customers. When you create Facebook ads, you start with them. The further you get away from that center, the less confidence you should have in the results.

Luckily for you, there are plenty of ways to target a highly relevant audience instead of blindly targeting click farm countries and broad, fluffy interests.

If Facebook Ads Don’t Work…

Let’s assume for a minute that this video is correct. Paying for Facebook ads is a complete waste of money.

I guess we also first have to assume that Facebook ads are only used for getting likes. But stick with me…

My entire Facebook strategy is based on building a relevant audience — largely through ads. If what I was paying for was only fake profiles, this would be obvious.

How would it be obvious? Well, I wouldn’t get anyone to opt in to my newsletter. Or register for my webinar. Or — most importantly — buy my stuff.

But my strategy is based on the importance of building that highly relevant audience. You can’t sell up front. You attract the right crowd. So when you’re ready to sell, you do use ads — but you target your fans.

My results?

Yes, Facebook Ads Work

I’ve seen first hand that Facebook ads work. They drive website traffic, build my email list and produce sales.

In fact, I’ve found repeatedly that it’s a highly relevant fan base that produces these things. Read these posts:

• How I Got 35X ROI on Facebook Ads
• How an Online Facebook Offer Targeted at Fans Resulted in 9.5X ROI
• Why You Shouldn’t Forget About Facebook’s Sidebar [Research]

[NOTE: I included the last blog post because it details my Cost Per Registration and Cost Per Sale by placement.]

If my fan base — built largely through ads — was built with bots, this would not be possible.

My Stats and History with Facebook Ads

I think it’s only fair that I share some of my stories and the breakdown of my own audience.

I am someone who has spent more than $12,000 on Facebook ads for my page since the start of 2013, and I am now routinely spending more than $2,000 per month.

But know that I’m just like anyone else. I didn’t fully understand all of the features when they were rolled out. I didn’t know of the pitfalls of poorly targeted ads in the beginning — and the targeting was not always all that good anyway.

As a result, I can include my name on the list of advertisers who regretfully paid for ads that weren’t nearly as successful as they thought they were at first glance. And some of those fans undoubtedly still like my page.

Here is a breakdown of my fan base in order of country (including top 10 only, which makes up about 80% of the total).

1. United States – 34.47%
2. Brazil – 7.53%
3. United Kingdom – 6.88%
4. Thailand – 6.46%
5. India – 5.70%
6. Australia – 5.01%
7. Portugal – 4.97%
8. Canada – 4.04%
9. Philippines – 2.78%
10. Italy – 1.76%

Recall that the video talked of a page being overrun with likes from click farm countries (75% of likes). I’m not getting that, as you can see, even though I spend quite a bit of money on ads. But I do have about 15% wrapped up in Thailand, India and the Philippines.

I can attribute a decent portion of that to lessons learned with targeting. In the beginning, I just assumed that if someone liked my page, they actually liked it — it didn’t matter where they were from.

Later, I would promote posts to people outside of my core countries thinking something similar — I was just looking for website traffic. Of course, many of those people liked my page, too.

Lessons learned, and these days I target almost exclusively the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. I do hate this because I know that business exists outside of these countries, but I also need to be careful.

Now, I’m not sure how the graph was made in the video to determine where fan engagement came from, but note that Facebook doesn’t break down engagement via fans and non-fans by country. I am going to assume he was referring to the People Talking About This by Country metric within Insights (note that this leaves out all sorts of good engagement, however).

Here are my top engagement countries by Talking About This over the most recent 28-day period (this makes up 83% of my Talking About This).

1. United States – 45.98%
2. United Kingdom – 12.38%
3. Australia – 6.99%
4. Canada – 5.28%
5. Ireland – 3.46%
6. India – 3.27%
7. New Zealand – 1.74%
8. Brazil – 1.72%
9. Israel – 1.25%
10. Italy – 1.14%

Now, if you’re following and you’re smart, I know exactly what you’re thinking: “Where are Thailand and the Philippines? And what’s the deal with Brazil? Doesn’t this partly prove the point of the video?”

Well, remember that I also advertise quite a bit these days. And as I said, I target the top four countries in these results almost exclusively. Since these stats don’t separate fans from non-fans or paid from organic, it’s really hard to make any sense of the numbers.

So the Talking About This numbers coming from all but the top four countries is organic only (or nearly organic only). That tells me that the fans in India, though I don’t doubt issues, have some value.

Is it possible that my audience from India, Thailand and the Philippines are horribly engaged compared to other countries? It is. But we already know the issues with these countries, and I seem to have that under control.

Yes, There’s a Problem, But Mitigate It

Those who watch that video will likely walk away into one of three groups:

• It validates their lack of success with Facebook ads
• It proves that those who take shortcuts will fail
• It’s a cautionary tale

The first two groups already know where they stand. I’m hoping to help the third group understand that they can find success with Facebook ads. They just can’t take shortcuts.

I will not deny that there is an issue with fake profiles, bots and spam accounts on Facebook. There is a problem. When you spend money on ads to get likes, you expect them all to be real people.

Facebook does need to clean this up the best they can. But understand that the problem is not unique to Facebook. And it’s a problem that will never be completely eliminated.

Your job as an advertiser is to understand the environment. Undesirable people and accounts are everywhere. They are a minefield. You need to avoid them and reach the people most likely to care about your brand.

Because Facebook’s ability to target is so powerful, you have more tools than the typical marketer to do just that. If you ignore these tools — or are unable to use them properly — you will fail. You will not get value out of your fan base. You will not build your email list. You will not profit.

It’s up to you whether you’d like to put in the effort.

The post Facebook Fraud Response: Are Facebook Ads a Waste of Money? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

mar-ket-er n (1787) : one that deals in a market; specif : one that promotes or sells a product or service

This is an old school definition of “marketer” from my old school Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary published in 1993 that I took with me to college.

What a simple definition. One that promotes or sells a product or service.

The problem is that, while roles required of a marketer have changed, most marketers continue to be ruled by this old playbook. They sell a product or service. That’s it.

I started thinking through words that come to mind when I think of a “marketer.” This reflects not only what I think of the common-day marketer, but how they are perceived.

Sleazy.

Always selling.

Not trustworthy.

Manipulative.

Deceptive.

Exaggerating.

False promises.

Pushy.

Empty titles.

Arrogant.

Brash.

Tone deaf.

I’m Not a Marketer

Immediately after graduating from college with that dictionary, I floated around for a bit with no clear vision of what I wanted to do. I bartended for about 10 months and then took a job with a telecommunications company.

That would lead me to possibly the most important job of my life: A telemarketer.

I hated it so much. I would drink extra water to give me an extra excuse to get up from my desk. I hated calling these people because I hated getting those calls.

You know how “good” telemarketers won’t let you off the phone? I was totally cool with it. You’re busy? Don’t need what I’m selling? No problem. Have a good day!

I was possibly the worst telemarketer in the history of telemarketing. A big reason for this was the expectation of pushiness, deception and sale at any cost.

Luckily, things improved for me after that. A series of decisions and opportunities would lead me to a dream job of overseeing Fantasy Games for the NBA. Soon after my time there ended, I started looking for a new job.

One of those jobs was as VP of Strategic Marketing. I wasn’t a marketer, I thought. Why would I do that? How could I possibly be qualified?

It turns out I was actually behaving as a marketer with the NBA, and I never realized it. I had ads created. I managed message forums and the first NBA Facebook group. I led online and magazine content, writing and assembling the strategy.

Somehow, in the midst of doing something I loved, I was a marketer. But it was clearly defined in a different way than the caricature I had previously visualized.

Don’t Be a Caricature

Your role needs to be more than selling and promoting. Particularly now in this online world.

Don’t treat people as robots and numbers.

Don’t blame the tool or algorithm when something doesn’t go the way you planned.

You can’t succeed in today’s world as a simple marketer. Don’t let it define you.

Be more than someone who sells or promotes a product.

Redefining the Facebook Marketer

I want to be proud of this industry. And the way it’s currently perceived — and the way many execute the role — is nothing to be proud of.

You’re more than a seller and promoter. You don’t need to be sleazy or manipulative or deceptive.

Help.

Improve.

Provide value.

Change lives.

Earn trust.

Guide.

Have substance.

Sell ethically.

Teach.

Entertain.

Understand.

Listen.

Leave a mark.

What Would You Add?

What are the keywords missing from my list? Let me know your thoughts below!

The post You’re More Than a Marketer appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

As I sort through my angry emails and Facebook messages (largely related to Facebook changing their algorithm again), there’s a common theme I’m picking up: An over reliance on Facebook.

I know, this sounds crazy coming from someone like me. Facebook is core to my subject matter. You’ve undoubtedly seen many of my ads on Facebook. Yet Facebook doesn’t even make up the largest percentage of my referral traffic.

My point today is more than not wanting to rely too much on Facebook. The same can be said for anyone whose business is mostly driven by a single website or social network outside of their control.

Today I want to give you an idea of where my traffic comes from. Additionally, we’ll get an inside look at the source of some of my online revenue. In the end, I’ll talk about my recommendations for how you can build your business without relying too heavily on Facebook — while also benefitting from it.

My Traffic Sources

During the past three months, visits to my website can be broken down as follows:

• Organic Search: 62.17%
• Facebook: 12.19%
• Direct: 10.80%
• Email: 5.74%
• Other Website Referrals: 5.52%
• Twitter: 1.34%
• Other Social: 1.16%
• Campaigns: 1.08%

[Note: I needed to extract Email from Direct. This will matter later.]

I’m not here to tell you that this is the proper breakdown by any means. It’s only meant to illustrate that Facebook, while being my second biggest traffic driver, only sends 12% of my visits.

The amount of traffic driven by email is growing as I continue to build my email list. But I regularly will have days where a single email will drive 1,000 clicks to my website. The goal is to make this percentage as high as possible.

As you can see, Organic Search is by far my biggest traffic driver. Of course, Google makes up almost all of that number. While such a high percentage makes me nervous, this is actually down from being over 80% not long ago. And actually, the most recent 30 day period has organic search just under 60%.

It’s not that I want to get less organic search. Not at all, actually (it’s growing). I simply want to build up other methods (again, the main being email) to knock the percentage down a bit. While I do nothing that should upset Google, they can easily change their algorithm and send me less traffic.

On the surface, you might even question why I value the traffic so much from Facebook. I have over 35,000 fans, I post every day and I also spend a decent amount of money on advertising. Yet, Facebook still only drives 12% for me.

Is Facebook really that valuable to me?

Well, that takes us to revenue…

Some of My Online Revenue Sources

I also wanted to break down the percentage of online revenue I get as a result of this traffic. Keep in mind that this is inexact. It doesn’t include my one-on-one service because I’ve yet to figure out a good way to track it (no purchase redirect).

Regardless, we have a pretty decent starting point here. Below is the same list of referrers again, but it now also includes percentage of online revenue that resulted from those referrals:

• Organic Search: 62.17% Traffic, 33.18% Revenue
• Facebook: 12.19% Traffic, 25.20% Revenue
• Direct: 10.80% Traffic, 19.36% Revenue
• Email: 5.74% Traffic
• Other Website Referrals: 5.52% Traffic, 6.45% Revenue
• Twitter: 1.34% Traffic, 0.92% Revenue
• Other Social: 1.16% Traffic, 0.92% Revenue
• Campaigns: 1.08% Traffic, 10.75% Revenue

[Note: Here’s where extracting Email from Direct becomes a problem. While I could dig further to get the precise percentage of revenue from email, I don’t have it available at this time.]

Now you begin to see the value of the traffic I’m getting. If the percentage of revenue is greater than the percentage of traffic, that is a pretty good sign that we’re looking at an efficient revenue driver.

As much as I love Google, I get quite a bit of traffic from it that doesn’t lead to revenue. Organic search is still my biggest revenue driver, however.

But take a look at Facebook. Even though only 12.19% of my traffic comes from there, these visits lead to more than a quarter of my revenue.

Direct and Email, no matter how that shakes out, provides a higher percentage of my revenue than traffic. Same with Other Website Referrals (like Social Media Examiner and PostPlanner), which must be highly relevant.

Most efficient are the Campaigns. This includes ads on my site and other specific campaigns I’m tracking with URL parameters. Not a surprise that this does well, and I should do more of it.

Don’t Build Your House on Rented Land

I often get asked the question whether a website is even necessary. There’s so much you can do within Facebook, after all. And the amount of maintenance is lower.

My answer: Heck yes, a website is necessary!

There’s an old saying that I’m likely about to butcher: Don’t build your house on rented land.

For the slow folks, your house in this example is your business and rented land is Facebook. But it doesn’t need to be Facebook. It could be YouTube, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest.

I’ve seen too many businesses attempt to run entirely within a single social network. No website. No email list. Or those two things are very low on the priority list.

This is dangerous. And people who run their businesses this way are those who are bound to be most upset about any changes Facebook — or any other rented land — makes.

What This Doesn’t Mean

Some will assume I’m saying it’s time to pull out of Facebook.

No way! It’s all about how you use it.

You should absolutely use Facebook and other social networks to drive website traffic and revenue. But don’t allow all business to happen there. Don’t put your entire business at the mercy of those websites.

If Facebook blows up tomorrow, I’d certainly have to adjust my subject matter. But I’ve been building a house on land I own — as a result, I’m better able to withstand such an event.

I see Facebook as an extension of my business. The central hub is my website, and I drive people to it with Facebook, email, Twitter, YouTube and other networks (as well as my podcast and webinars).

Due to my efforts, other websites drive traffic to my site for me, and this also leads to the high amount of Google referrals.

Every piece has a role. But the pieces I own are most important to the success of my business.

Your Turn

What percentage of your traffic and revenue comes from Facebook, Google and other sources? What are you doing to keep as much as you can within your control?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post This is Why You Shouldn’t Build a Business Entirely Within Facebook appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook marketers are a demanding bunch. That’s fine, unless we’re unreasonable.

In the case of micromanaging the Reach of individual posts, we are being completely and insanely unreasonable.

Part of this is Facebook’s fault. Part of it is due to an old thinking hangover while more advanced strategies have evolved. And some of it is due to pure ignorance.

If you can’t tell, I’m beyond annoyed by the Reach topic. I was annoyed more than a year ago when it was the reason of the day to revolt against Facebook. And I’m well past exhausted these days.

Reach is only one small, peripheral metric that means very little in the grand scheme of things. And the way most of us are using it is completely wrong.

[Tweet “We’re obsessed with Facebook Reach. We’re furious when it’s down. And we have it all wrong…”]

How We Are Using Reach Now

Ask the typical Facebook marketer what metrics they follow, and they’re bound to mention Reach near the top of the list.

Why? It’s displayed on every post. You don’t need to go into Insights to see it. You don’t need to download an export. And you see it in real time.

We can’t ignore it. We’re obsessed with Reach to the point that it paralyzes and manipulates us.

So currently, the discussion around Reach is always about how “I only got X Reach on this post” or “I usually reach X% of my Fans.”

We micromanage the hell out of it. And whenever that number dips, we freak.

How We’re Being Unreasonable

So many reasons. Where to start?

First of all, we need to understand how Facebook works. The typical user could get 1,500 stories in a given day, but Facebook only shows 300. So that would be the 300 stories from the friends and brands that a user interacts with most.

Based on my recent experiment, I saw 106 organic brand stories in a 24-hour period. That’s a lot. And they came from 38 brands. They became preferred because I interact with them in some way.

You’ve gotta be good to break into that 300. You’ve gotta be real good. And since the user base is constantly growing (now at 1.19 Billion) and more active than ever, competition increases on a daily basis. Oh, and did I mention more brands are jumping in on a daily basis as well as advertising more?

Facebook needs the News Feed to be a good user experience. And you can’t doubt that they’re doing something right given how insanely active it is. They’ve tested a filtered Feed vs. a non-filtered feed (countless iterations), and the current version results in the most engagement.

Live with it. That’s the way it works.

But beyond the filtering, you can’t reach everyone. You can’t reach close to everyone. Only about half of your Fans are online every day. And if you post once, you’re only going to reach the small percentage who were on during a two hour window or so.

You’re angry because you aren’t reaching more than 5% of your Fans? Or 10%? Or sometimes more?

Do you know what percentage of followers you reach on Twitter with a single tweet?

But we also wrongly assume that the Page Like means that a user wants to see everything we post. This is complete bull.

I like a few hundred Pages. Mainly because I like a musician or movie or TV show or product. I couldn’t care less if I ever saw a post from them.

And that’s the way the typical user feels. Not the marketing user like you and me. The typical user.

We’re unreasonable because we assume everyone wants to see our stuff. And they want to see every post by every brand they’ve liked. And apparently, they even want to see every post they missed when they weren’t online.

We seem to expect that every post we publish will be gift wrapped and hand delivered to each of our Fans. Handle with care…

Why This is Facebook’s Fault

This is Facebook’s fault because Reach is a metric in the first place. They don’t have to make it so obvious how many users we reach with each post. They don’t have to make that data available at all. But they do.

Not only do they make it a metric, they make it THE metric. You can’t avoid it.

Beyond showing it on each post, it’s everywhere in the web Insights. It’s here…

And here…

And here…

And here…

And here…

And here…

Facebook convinces you it’s important by making it the focus of nearly every chart and graph. And this doesn’t even mention the dozens of times Reach is mentioned in the export files.

It’s a risk on their part. While it can be motivation for advertising, it’s also the source of an awful lot of confusion, outrage and unreasonable expectations.

Twitter doesn’t even make this data available. I don’t know of any social network that does. But since we know our Reach on Facebook, we scrutinize the hell out of it.

If you didn’t know your Reach, you would — I hope — focus on the metrics that actually matter. The metrics that lead to your business goals. The metrics like post shares, link clicks and conversions.

Instead, we’re stuck in this endless loop of Reach fury.

Reach Doesn’t Equal Revenue

Reach means very little because it is rarely a good indicator of success.

If you’re an advanced Facebook marketer (and I know you are!), you measure things like traffic to your website, leads and purchases that came as a result of your efforts on Facebook.

If you follow your metrics closely (and I know you do!), you know that a high Reach doesn’t guarantee these things.

If Facebook shows your posts organically to those who care most about your content, it should result in high efficiency. It cuts out those who otherwise ignore you.

Here’s an example of when Reach matters very little…

On Cyber Monday, I created a Facebook Offer. I spent $200 to reach about 9,000 Fans, resulting in nearly $2,000 in direct revenue. I also spent $30 to reach more than 85,000 non-Fans, resulting in not a single sale.

If I put my head down when you complain to me about Reach, this is why. I’m tired of hearing about it. Show me that you’re beyond Reach. If actions that lead to your business goals are down, that’s something to be concerned about.

Otherwise?

The Shift: How We Should Be Using Reach

Now, I do see some value in Reach. But the way we currently use it is all wrong. And the reason for this is a shift in the typical content publishing strategy.

We focus on Reach on a post-by-post basis because “back in the old days” we were told not to post more than once per day. Sometimes, only a couple of times per week.

So the Reach of that one post mattered. We put all of our eggs into that one basket.

But we don’t do it that way anymore. We know that if we post multiple times in a day — as long as we do it strategically — we can see huge benefits. I often see 15 posts or more per day from some news Pages.

When you post multiple times per day, your post Reach really doesn’t matter anymore. Your goal is to reach as many relevant people as possible in that day — or even week.

I gave this example in a recent post I wrote, but let’s revisit. On November 14, I shared five different times:

• 8:15am (2,385 Organic Reach)
• 12:30pm (2,143)
• 4:50pm (3,006)
• 8:50pm (5,742)
• 11:25pm (2,334)

The individual post Reach wasn’t very good for three of these posts in particular. For one, I reached a number that was only 8.6% of my total Fan base.

But if I look at my Daily Organic Reach (found in the Page Level Export), I actually reached 6,709 people that day. This number was 26.8% of my total Fan base.

That week, I reached 17,468 people organically. This number was 70% of my total Fan base.

You see where I’m heading here? If we stop micro-managing our Reach on a post-by-post basis, we might actually see that we reach far more people than we originally thought. It just might be over a day or week.

If you’re realistic about user activity and how often your Fans actually want to hear from you, doesn’t it make a whole lot more sense to be looking at these numbers in this way?

When you report your results to the CEO, do you think that he/she cares what your Reach was for an individual post? Or is the bigger picture that you reached X number of people in a day or a week more important?

I know how I feel. But I know this takes a major shift in expectations to convince many to join me.

How about you?

Don’t Follow the Mob

The raging mob will tell you it’s time to revolt. I stress caution.

Look at your numbers. Look well beyond Reach. Commit to fully understanding the Facebook ecosystem and what an effective strategy looks like.

I’m passionate about this because I consistently see results. I have clients who consistently see results. And there are countless others who do, too.

The truth is that a successful revolt may be good for Facebook. It’s certainly good for the marketers who stick around. Remember that competition that kept you out of the News Feed? It just got a little less competitive.

So, I’m not appealing to the mob. They will continue to be unreasonable. They are obsessed with stats that don’t matter. They don’t want to put in the hard work, and they want to point the finger when their efforts aren’t working.

But that’s not you. And I want to be sure you trust your instincts on this.

The post Why Our Obsession with Facebook Page Post Reach is All Wrong appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Back when Facebook first started discussing the possibility of auto-play video ads nearly a year ago (!!), I thought it was a terrible idea. And I’m someone who has been using Facebook since 2007 and tends to keep an open mind.

The backlash to something that doesn’t even exist yet was huge. We didn’t know how it would work, but we already hated it. As a result, Facebook did something they rarely do: They allowed the negative reaction to redirect their launch plans.

While I think it’s important to listen to the consumer, I’ve also admired that Facebook will often push through the negative reactions in the name of innovation.

Facebook should learn from feedback. But the public is also generally averse to change, and initial reactions are rarely a good indicator of what users will think of that change months down the road. Facebook has innovated by understanding that, sometimes, people don’t know what they like.

So that just shows how significant this backlash — again to something that doesn’t even exist yet — was. As a result, those auto-play ads won’t be rolled out in 2013, and there’s no immediate plan for when you will see them.

But you will see them. The groundwork has been laid with auto-play user video. It’s now just a matter of time.

The following is an excerpt from an interview by InsideFacebook’s Justin Lafferty with James Borow, CEO of Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer SHIFT. It underscores my current stance (and backtrack) on auto-play video ads.

IF: I know the big thing with video is auto-play video. Facebook has kept pushing back, pushing back, pushing back. It’s assumed that we’re going to see this at some point in 2014. What kind of effect do you think this will have both on the user experience and for advertisers?

JB: I don’t think it will be auto-play in the sense of being a bad experience. I think it’s going to be more like scrolling through Vine or Instagram. Your feed is going to become alive based on what you’ve interacted with. I think it’s going to be awesome, and it’s not going to be just for ads. Similar to Vine — as you scroll through, the News Feed will come alive. It’s like the newspaper in the Harry Potter movies.

I think from a user standpoint, it’s going to be great and then from an advertiser standpoint, it’s going to lead to incredible profit.

A few months ago, I would have scoffed at this like everyone else. But Borow is right.

It turns out that this delay was the right move. In fact, I’m convinced that when these auto-play video ads are finally rolled out, you won’t even care. You may even like them (whether you’ll admit it or not).

Here’s why…

[Tweet “Auto-play Facebook video ads are going to work, and you may actually love them. Here’s why…”]

You’ve Already Proven to Love Auto-Play Video

When Facebook first started talking about auto-play video ads, it was a concept that was difficult to visualize for most of us. If you’re like me, you expected something that took over the page and completely destroyed the user experience.

We think that because of what we see on sales pages and websites that have auto-play audio and video. It’s incredibly annoying for those of us who have multiple tabs and browsers open and can’t find a source of that sound.

But since the initial discussion of auto-play ads, something important happened: Vine and Instagram video exploded.

If you haven’t used either of these services (you’ll soon be in the minority), video automatically plays on your phone as you scroll through your feed. But they don’t all play at once. Only the current video is displayed. When you scroll past, the experience moves to the next video.

And you know what? It works well. And people love it.

Auto-Play Video is Happening on Facebook, and It’s Awesome

Have you noticed? Auto-play videos from your friends have already started when viewing from your phone.

This is not at all what I expected. It’s a seamless experience. Audio does not play, so it does not interrupt or annoy my browsing. If the initial few seconds of a video interest you, click it to bring up a video viewer with audio.

Guess what? I welcome this on my phone. It’s inviting. And I’m much more likely to watch a video as a result.

Auto-Play Video Will Come to Brands

So, why isn’t this capability rolled out to brands yet? Pretty obvious. The minute that happens, they can immediately be turned into ads.

Facebook determined that users weren’t ready for that yet. But in the meantime, we’re being warmed up to it through Vine, Instagram and auto-play videos from our friends on the Facebook app.

This functionality will come to brands. And by then, it will be functionality we’ll be accustomed to seeing.

When that happens, you will be more likely to click and watch those videos. And it will be enormously effective, when used correctly.

We’ve been bracing ourselves for the worst, but — in all likelihood — the only difference between an auto-play video ad and an organic auto-play video from a brand will be the “Sponsored” label. Will you hate some auto-play video ads? Absolutely. Just like you hate some organic content and many of the ads that are horribly done.

It really doesn’t matter if it’s an organic video from the Page you like or an ad. When done well, users will embrace them. When done poorly, they will be marked as spam.

Will users revolt and leave Facebook in droves? When initially announced, I saw this as a possibility. But now, thanks to Facebook holding off while we unknowingly get warmed up to it, I expect this won’t be such a big deal after all.

What Do You Think?

Here is what I said about the prospects of auto-video ads back in December of 2012:

Not only do people hate auto-play, but apparently, this will be available for advertisers to target non-fans in the news feed. It’s a recipe for disaster. There has been all kinds of blowback from non-fans over suggested posts and promoted posts. Can you imagine the response to auto-play video? Unlikely to be worth it to the advertiser.

Of course, there’s still plenty we don’t know about how this will work — whether audio will play automatically or not. But based on what I know, I just don’t see any positive angle to this.

Is it possible that auto-play video would be effective? Sure, it’s possible. But my bet is that this will be one of the rare occasions where backlash will be warranted and Facebook will pull back — potentially before it even happens. A new video ad unit could be a nice opportunity for advertisers. But auto-play — particularly in the news feeds of non-fans — is too much.

I’ve done a complete 180 since then, at least regarding whether I think they will work. I was on the right track here regarding audio. It was true we didn’t know the full story yet. And I even nearly predicted the launch delay.

But I did not expect to embrace the idea nearly one year later the way I do today. Now I can’t wait.

What do you think? Do you support or oppose the idea of auto-play video ads on Facebook, and has your opinion changed?

The post Facebook Auto-Play Video Ads Will Work, And You Might Even Like Them appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Everyone wants to know how to get more Facebook Likes. Marketers have goals — whether from superiors or their own — focused entirely around a big, round number.

Obsessed. And they’ve got it all wrong.

Look, big numbers are fun. I get it. I’m approaching 3,000,000 total page views on this site. I’m also approaching 20,000 total Facebook Likes.

But the number, in and of itself, means a whole lot of nothing.

You should know why by now. Many brands, guided by this obsession, buy Likes. Or they pay for poorly targeted ads that net them thousands of Likes from bots and irrelevant countries. Or they run mainstream contests that bring in the masses.

But when it comes to monetizing these people, such brands get the same results: Crickets.

The problem is that this obsession for a number takes the brand’s attention away from what really matters. And such Pages that obsess over the wrong things are so easy to spot.

Your content lacks value. It lacks direction and structure. It only sells and it’s sporadic. And your value proposition is far from clear.

Why? Because the brand doesn’t know why someone should like their Page in the first place. They don’t. They hope “If you build it, they will come” will work. And when it doesn’t, they resort to tricks to inflate that number.

[Tweet “Do you even know why you’re trying to increase Facebook likes, or is it no more than a number?”]

Know Your Value Proposition

I’ve had people come to me with the primary goal of building their Fan base to 10,000. Or 20,000. Or 100,000. They want to know how to get there as fast as possible.

I then ask them for their value proposition. The response: “Ummmmmm…”

When you obsess over number of Likes, you are dehumanizing your audience. It becomes only a number.

What you want is raving Fans. Fans are users. Users are people. People aren’t robots. People lead to business.

Humanize your audience. They are people. Refer to them as the “beautiful, amazing men and women who are passionate about a topic to which I can contribute. They like and dislike things. They have problems. They have emotions. They have limited patience.”

Why should someone like your Page? What is interesting about you? What is unique? What value do you provide?

Before you start talking about goals for your business on Facebook, you must be able to answer these questions. If you can’t, you’ll inevitably stray to focus on empty numbers.

What can you share on a daily basis to make a person’s life better?

This doesn’t mean posting a status update because it gets the most Reach. Or posting a photo because it gets the most clicks. Or using the call to action that gets the most bland responses.

Know who your ideal audience is and what makes them tick. Know what they like and dislike and how you can make their lives better. Leave the cat photos and memes for someone else.

Regularly and consistently publish valuable, self-less, helpful content. The purpose of the majority of posts should be to educate or entertain.

Once you’ve defined your value proposition, craft your branding, imagery, tagline, content and strategy around THIS. Not a goal for a number.

If you don’t do this first — if you don’t pre-define your value proposition — you can only build a number, not a business. And any results will be either hollow or unsustainable.

Build Organically and Paid

Once you define your audience and your value proposition, building that audience — an audience of people, not numbers — becomes infinitely easier. When you focus on providing value, you will grow organically.

But since you also know that ideal audience, it becomes far easier to define them when targeting ads. You know what they like and target those things in Precise Interests. You craft imagery and copy around filling the desires and needs you know they have.

Of course, you have to first answer some difficult questions to get there. Increasing an audience on Facebook takes effort. Don’t take shortcuts. But if you put in the effort to humanize your audience and your message to them, you are much more likely to produce positive results that actually lead to business.

And that — revenue — is the type of result you can be proud of.

The post Increasing Facebook Likes: You’re Building a Number, Not a Business appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I’m excited about Facebook hashtags. There are very real opportunities for marketers to use hashtags, assuming Facebook doesn’t screw it up.

Facebook hashtags, in their current form, are flawed. Like everything Facebook rolls out, the hashtag is an incomplete product. It’s far from perfect.

Hopefully Facebook realizes the most important problems with hashtags and addresses them quickly. Otherwise, they’re dead in the water.

Here are the four things that Facebook needs to fix fast, or hashtags will never catch on.

Problem 1: Filtering

I’ve gotta admit that it’s not entirely clear how Facebook orders results in hashtag feeds. And that’s an immediate problem.

It appears that the items at the top are usually most recent. But they aren’t always. And the further you scroll down — apparently once you scroll past the most recent day — you’re more likely to run into posts out of order.

Here’s one of several examples I’ve seen when viewing the #FacebookMarketing results:

As you can see, the post at the top was 23 hours ago and the next item is nine hours ago. There are actually many examples of this deeper into the results.

Is Facebook filtering content in the same way they filter my News Feed? If so, this completely defeats the purpose when using hashtags for discovery. Facebook will bury or possibly hide some content from the feed results, depending on the user looking at them.

This presents a problem beyond discovery. If real-time results are filtered, Facebook hashtags are worthless for breaking news and following sporting events.

If the results aren’t in order for a sporting event, they lack context for the reader. It becomes a confusing mess and eliminates one of the biggest reasons hashtags are so interesting on Twitter.

Problem 2: Spam

Look at these fun results when you follow the #NBAFinals hashtag:

Dozens and dozens of these irrelevant spam posts.

Of course, spam isn’t a problem unique to Facebook hashtags. They exist on Twitter, too. But the relevant posts on Twitter far outnumber the spammy ones, retaining the value.

Hashtags will never catch on if following them doesn’t provide value. Either Facebook needs to do something to limit the spam (I assume the spam reporting function still applies here) or Facebook needs to make a push to increase relevant use of them.

Problem 3: Mobile

If you see a hashtag on your mobile device, it’s just ugly, plain text.

Click it. Nothing.

More than half of users access Facebook from their mobile device. More than half of Facebook users can’t click a hashtag.

I understand that this is what Facebook does. They roll everything out in stages. Mobile is often last.

But this is getting ridiculous. You can’t get traction on a new feature if mobile continues to be an afterthought.

Facebook keeps telling us that mobile is a priority. But rollouts like this one make me wonder just how true that is.

Problem 4: No Reader

I use hashtags in my posts. But I almost never follow hashtag feeds.

This is a problem. If everyone is using hashtags without anyone following the feeds, it completely defeats the purpose of using a hashtag in the first place.

A big reason for this is that Facebook has not integrated an easy way to do follow hashtags into the interface.

An easy solution would be to add the ability to favorite a hashtag feed, similar to how you can favorite an interest list. One has to assume this will be part of the new Facebook News Feed.

Other Problems?

What other problems do you see with Facebook hashtags? Do you think they’ll eventually catch on and be valuable?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The 4 Problems with Facebook Hashtags appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I published a post for AgoraPulse today called Know Your Facebook Ad Metrics: Those You Use and One You Should. It’s a good overview of what all of the various Facebook ad metrics mean and how you should use them.

I felt that the bottom portion of that post was a good jumping off point for a separate post here. That portion focused on the metric you aren’t using, but you should.

The typical marketer focuses on CTR (Click Through Rate), CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), CPC (Cost Per Click) and number of Actions. Those are all good metrics to follow, don’t get me wrong, but they do not determine success or failure of your campaign in and of themselves.

The metric you need to be using is Cost Per Desired Action.

The Flaw of Traditional Metrics

The metric I see discussed most often related to campaign success is CTR. But the problem with such a metric is that it lacks context.

I’ve heard people say that you should look for a CTR over .5%, depending on the ad type. If you surpass 1%, that’s awesome. I’ve seen ads reach as high as 10% CTR — meaning that 10 of every 100 people who see your ad clicked on it.

Here are the problems: Fluffy clicks and a widely varying CPM and CPC.

Regular CPM could be as low as $.15. If you don’t care about quality and target the “right” countries, you can get Cost Per Action (likes) as low as $.03.

Meanwhile, you can also use the Optimized bidding methods, where Facebook targets your ad at people most likely to perform your desired action. In these cases, CPM tends to be at least a few dollars, going as high as $20 or more.

An Example

Below is a hypothetical example involving Ad #1 and Ad #2. Both ads have a Reach of 100,000, Frequency of 1.5 and total Impressions of 150,000.

Ad #1: 6,500 Clicks, 4,000 Actions, 4.33% CTR
Ad #2: 2,000 Clicks, 1,500 Actions, 1.33% CTR

Which ad was more successful?

Hopefully you said: I don’t know! I need more info!

Unfortunately, most advertisers stop here, focusing entirely on CTR. But the CPM of Ad #1 is $9.50 and for Ad #2 it’s $3.00. Splits that can easily happen, particularly if Ad #1 is Optimized CPM and Ad #2 is regular CPM.

Based on that, here are a few more stats…

Ad #1: $.22 CPC, $1,425 Spent
Ad #2: $.23 CPC, $450 Spent

Which ad was more successful?

Hopefully you again said: Jon! Dude! I need more info!

Once again, many advertisers worry about the CPC. They’re on the right track, but “Clicks” typically include many uneventful things that pad the stats.

And one more stat…

Ad #1: $.36 CPA (Cost Per Action)
Ad #2: $.30 CPA

For the purpose of this example, I’m going to assume that all Actions measured here are “Desired” Actions. But understand that you may need to sort this out a bit more since depending on the ad you may get Actions that aren’t directly related to success.

In the example above, Ad #2 is more successful and efficient at driving the desired action. But such information is buried — and not displayed within the main Facebook Ads Manager interface.

Cost Per Desired Action and ROI

The reason why you want to isolate the Cost Per Desired Action is so that you can measure ROI. How many Likes, Conversions, Sales or Leads did you get per dollar spent on your ads? And how much revenue directly resulted?

Before you get to ROI, you first need to optimize your ads to determine which are most efficient at driving the desired action. Once you stop those that aren’t working and ride those that are, you can compare your cost of advertising to the direct revenue that resulted.

We don’t talk about direct ROI very often when it comes to Facebook marketing, but here is a case when it’s absolutely possible — and recommended.

Following are some examples of Desired Actions based on types of ads you may be running:

• Page Like Sponsored Story: Page Like
• Domain Sponsored Story: Link Click
• App Install Sponsored Story: App Install
• Event Sponsored Story: Event RSVP
• Facebook Offer: Offer Claim
• Page Post Ad: Comment, Like or Share*

* NOTE: If you are using offsite pixels to measure conversions (purchase, lead, form submission, key page view) that result from your Facebook ad, those conversions would represent your Desired Action.

As mentioned earlier, there is no CPDA (or CPA) metric within the Facebook Ads Manager interface, so you’ll need to calculate that manually. There are a few methods described in detail in that post I wrote for AgoraPulse.

Your Turn

How do you measure success of your Facebook ads? Do you do something similar or something completely different?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads: The Metric for Measuring Success and ROI appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The problem? It’s freaking ridiculous.

Keep in mind, this comes from a guy who defends Facebook on every design change. Every privacy change. Every change that results in mass torches, pitchforks and hilariously ironic protest groups.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The change itself actually makes sense to me. The enforcement of it, however, is complete nonsense.

Understanding the 20% Rule

Ads and sponsored stories in News Feed may not include images comprised of more than 20% text.

Here are some other notes regarding this rule, per the Help Center:

• Examples include promoted Page posts, app install ads, Offers, Events and other News Feed ads
• Does not apply to pictures of products that include text on the product
• Images zoomed in on logos or images with text overlay not allowed
• Images edited to include text on the product as a loophole to the policy not allowed

Again, to this point I am in the extreme minority with understanding where Facebook is heading on this. Creating an ad out of a large image with text in it is essentially a way to take up more space in the News Feed with text.

So if the policy were enforced accordingly, I’d accept the rule. I wouldn’t necessarily be a raving fan of the rule, but I’d understand.

But here are the problems that are making my life as an advertiser a living hell…

How is 20% Measured?

Other than providing examples of some ads that do and don’t violate the 20% rule, there is no guide or tool that helps you determine whether or not your image is in compliance.

Either you’re measuring text in these images with a tool that you aren’t making available to the public or you’re simply guessing. In each case, it’s poor policy.

Facebook Sucks at Enforcement

1. Link Share Rejections. An example is a Promoted Post that I ran for a client. That post was a link share that drove users to a Facebook tab. The link preview had more than 20% text in it.

After getting rejected, I decided to run it as a Page Post Ad that would run only in the sidebar (we’ll get to this problem later). Rejected again.

A freaking link share. So you’re telling me that advertisers have to control how much text is in the thumbnail image? That’s absolutely ludicrous since it won’t always be controlled — and the image is rarely created with Facebook in mind.

And that’s only part of why this rejection was ridiculous. This particular Page Post Ad was targeted at a Custom Audience of people who aren’t already connected to the Page. I created this ad with the full intention of it never appearing in News Feeds. But because — I assume — it could appear in News Feeds as a Suggested Post due to a minuscule number of friends of Fans, the link share thumbnail image gets the ad rejected.

Absolutely insane.

2. Some Get Through, Some Don’t. I promoted a similar post that this time included a shared image. That image was a screen grab of a book gallery that was featured within a Facebook tab. Once again, that image did indeed have more than 20% text.

But that Promoted Post made it through. It was insanely effective. It was so effective that I extended the daily budget and expiration date to go through the end of February.

Of course, I got greedy and decided to create a Page Post Ad out of that same post that would — hopefully — go into the sidebar. Facebook rejected that one, and seemed to pick up on the other ad that had been going on for three weeks. They then killed that one, too.

Sometimes You Can’t Avoid the News Feed

Some of the most effective ads are Page Post Ads and Sponsored Stories that promote the engagement of Page content. Sometimes, those posts include images that have more than 20% text in them.

Sure, I get it. I can’t promote that post in the News Feed. So I guess I’ll just promote it in the sidebar.

But here’s the deal… You can’t.

Even when you use Power Editor, you can’t create a Page Post Ad or Sponsored Story that only shows up in the sidebar. This wasn’t clear to me until Facebook recently added some copy explaining the various placements in Power Editor.

Do you see the problem here, folks? Previously, the second option was only “Desktop.” My assumption was that this was simply all sidebar ads on desktop placements since the final option was “News Feed only.”

But “Desktop” includes the sidebar AND News Feed. In other words, if you want to target Fans or friends of Fans with a Page Post Ad or Sponsored Story, it’s impossible to hit them only on the sidebar.

Since you can’t avoid the News Feed, you can’t create ads that contain more than 20% text in them — even if your intention is to reach only the sidebar!

The result: I’m getting rejected over and over and over again. Link shares and ads that I never wanted to show up in the News Feed to begin with.

This is Ridiculous

Otherwise, just come out and say that no ad images for Page Post Ads or Sponsored Stories — whether in the News Feed or otherwise — can contain more than 20% text. Because that’s essentially what’s being enforced.

Your Turn

The post The Problem with Facebook’s 20-Percent Text in Ad Images Rule appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I am the proud father of three boys. Our youngest is four and is often the center of attention. He flirts with the ladies, is enthusiastic about the smallest things and loves to tell jokes.

His favorite joke-telling time is dinner, when he knows that he has a receptive audience. He’ll make up “knock-knock” jokes that make absolutely no sense, but that doesn’t matter to anyone at the table. In particular, the pint sized comedian finds them to be especially hilarious.

This joke caught the loudest laugh of the night about a week ago:

Knock-knock. [Who’s there?] Cheetos. [Cheetos who?] I want Cheetos for Christmas!

Hilarity ensues.

So of course, my wife decided to take him up on it and buy our little man Cheetos. This wouldn’t be his only gift, of course, but we figured it would be a nice gag.

This Christmas season has been especially fun for us because our little guy soaks up every minute of it. For the past month, he asks us daily, “Is tomorrow Christmas?” He couldn’t wait.

Christmas morning rolled around. Stepping down the stairs in his one-piece pajamas, he spots the presents under the tree. Rushing over, he marks his spot and immediately begins jumping and screaming with joy: “That’s mine! That’s mine!”

His enthusiasm never waned. Every present he opened, he jumped and screamed as if this were the greatest present anyone could receive.

And then came the special gift bag…

“YES!! CHEETOS!! I GOT CHEETOS!! THANK YOU!!”

It was my favorite moment of Christmas.

Perspective of a Child

As we get older, our perspective changes. Even our older kids, though plenty appreciative, lose that enthusiasm. You begin lining up expectations or comparing this Christmas to Christmases of the past.

He doesn’t have a point of comparison. It doesn’t matter to him. This is the greatest Christmas that any kid could ever have.

You’re likely to watch countless videos of spoiled and entitled kids, angry about the color or specs of their Christmas iPhones. But this is a kid who couldn’t be happier with a bag of Cheetos.

There are a couple of very important lessons here that we adults can learn from this.

Live in the Now

Not everything needs to be graded. It doesn’t matter if this was the best Christmas or the 37th best Christmas. Likewise, it doesn’t always matter whether today was the best day of your business or the 365th best day.

Enjoy every small gift: Relish each comment, page view and share your blog receives. Don’t temper your enthusiasm because there was a better day — or several better days — that occurred before. Appreciate each and every one.

Celebrate the Little Things

That’s what I learned from a four-year-old this Christmas. For me, my bag of Cheetos is you taking the time to read this post. YES!! YOU READ THIS POST!! THANK YOU!!

What’s your bag of Cheetos?

The post What I Learned From a 4-Year-Old on Christmas appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Infographic Saturday has been going for about a month now, and I’m quickly realizing an unintentional theme: Agreement isn’t necessary.

I use this space to share an infographic that taught me something new or inspired a reaction. Lately, that reaction has been… Eh?

This week’s infographic is a terrific example. It looks fantastic. Someone spent a lot of time on it. There are five sources behind it, so proper research was done. It’s by Lori Taylor of SocialCaffeine, two sources I respect and trust. But…

It’s kinda worthless. There, I said it.

I’m not piling on you here, Lori. You’re awesome. It’s just that this is a popular link bait category (look, I’m participating now, too!) and the results rarely have much value.

Here’s why…

Contradictions

• Traffic builds after 9 am;
• Peak time is Wednesday at 3pm;
• Traffic fades after 4 pm; and
• Avoid posting on weekends.

To be fair to Lori, this comes straight out of a Mashable report conducted by bit.ly.

Interesting, though, that another infographic I shared a month ago was by Dan Zarella of Hubspot on this same subject of best times to post. Zarella, another respected social media tactician, found…

• Content posted after 8 pm gets more Likes and shares;
• Likes peak at around 8 pm while shares peak at 6 pm;
• Posts published on Saturdays and Sundays receive a higher Like percentage; and
• The worst Like percentage is on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday;

You following? These two reports completely contradict one another. Granted, Zarella uses “percentages” instead of raw totals, but the conclusions are clear opposites. Lori and bit.ly say to post between 1 and 4 pm while avoiding posting after 8 pm and the weekends; Zarella says the highest success is after 6 pm and on the weekends.

So we know nothing!

Does it Really Mean That?

Here’s my problem with bit.ly’s report (I’ll stop assigning blame to Lori here, she’s just reporting what she read): Their conclusions are based on peak and non-peak times. They suggest that you share content when everyone else is on and avoid when they aren’t.

Maybe that seems logical, but it’s wrong.

I don’t necessarily care when everyone else is on. I don’t want to compete with the firehose of information that is coming in during those times. I’m most concerned about getting the most likes, replies, shares and overall engagement that I can get.

You see, simply having a lot of people out there does not necessarily guarantee more engagement. Sometimes having less competition (like in the evenings and on the weekends) will actually give you a better chance of reaching more fans.

Relevance is Important

When is the best time to post? Before we get to the featured infographic, here’s mine…

All joking aside, it depends. Who are you? Where are you? What’s your industry? Where is your audience? When are they online?

Most of these studies survey hundreds or thousands of Pages to come to their conclusions. But this is a mishmash of geographies that are bound to have very different results. A business whose audience is only in Australia is bound to have a different peak time to post than a business in New York City.

That’s obvious, but unfortunately people still take this stuff as gospel. These reports are fun for entertainment purposes, but only you know the best time to post.

Wait, you don’t? You’re reading those posts and this one because you want us to tell you? Well, you’re failing.

Check out your Facebook Insights. From there, find the posts that generated the most engagement over a three month period. Find the posts that had the greatest reach. Then you will know the best time and days to post that are relevant to you.

Me? I have an international audience. I tend to see results before 10 am EST, between 2-4 pm EST and later at night. I’ve even scheduled content in the middle of the night that has received response.

So check it out (the original post is here). What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post The Best Time to Post on Facebook is the Worst Time appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This has been bothering me for a while, and it’s time that this blog post is written…

I keep seeing people freaking out about the fact that their brand’s Facebook Page posts only reach 16% of their fans, “forcing” them to pay for advertising. I continue to read grand proclamations about how EdgeRank is the culprit, and that they should be able to reach everyone.

Just stop.

My biggest struggle with EdgeRank (the formula Facebook uses to surface content that is important to you), is that Facebook is incredibly ambiguous about how it’s used. It makes sense that EdgeRank is the force behind Top News, but I still doubt it’s much of a factor when your News Feed is sorted by Most Recent.

How much exactly is Facebook keeping you from your audience? Is EdgeRank the reason the percentage is 16% instead of 17%? 30%? 50%? No one knows for sure.

I’ve read comments from uninformed users and blog posts from respected writers who are all certain that EdgeRank is the Boogeyman. Yet no one has statistics or studies showing exactly how that’s the case.

Something scientific would be great here, folks. “After a two week study, we concluded that our average Facebook post reached only 160 of our 1,000 fans, and we would have reached 40 more if not for EdgeRank.” You know, facts and evidence and stuff.

I’m fully convinced that we’re focusing on the wrong thing, and some basic math shows this to be the case. People want to point the finger when EdgeRank is not the main reason why you’re reaching only 16% of your fans.

Is 16% Really That Bad?

I find it a bit strange that so many marketers are demanding that their posts reach more than 16% of their fans. Why is it that anyone can expect we’d easily reach more?

The typical open rate for a marketing email is 20%. Yet, email is a stationary target. Whether your target audience is on their email right now or not, they’ll get that email. They just may not open it.

Facebook ain’t email, people. When you post an update, you aren’t sending it directly to your customers. Instead, when you share content to your Facebook Page, you’re doing so with the hope that your fans are around to see it.

On Facebook, your target audience is constantly moving. While users are on Facebook more than any other website, that doesn’t mean that your fans are sitting at their computers waiting for your brand’s latest update.

A recent study indicated that the typical Facebook update has a lifespan of 2 1/2 hours. If your fan isn’t on Facebook within 2 1/2 hours of you posting it, they probably won’t see it.

Another study indicates that the average user is on Facebook 16 hours per month, or about 30 minutes per day. So, what are the odds that your post reaches your target audience during that 2 1/2 hours when they are only on Facebook for 30 minutes per day? Also keep in mind that only half of all users are on Facebook on a given day.

Let’s do the math. An average Facebook user is on for 30 minutes per day. There’s a 2 1/2 hour window from when that person is online that you can reach them (total of three hours). Of a total 24-hour day (especially for international brands), that leaves you with a 12.5% chance of reaching fans through the News Feed on any given day — without considering EdgeRank.

Have a US-only audience and think that only 16 hours matter? Fine, then we’re talking 18.75%.

Maybe my math is wrong (statistics nerds — let me know your thoughts), but do you see what I’m getting at? Our biggest obstacle isn’t EdgeRank. It’s that our audience is a moving target. It’s that, unlike email, if our fans aren’t on Facebook during a small window of the day, they probably won’t see our post.

It just seems to me that people have latched onto the concept of EdgeRank without thinking. How many of your Twitter followers do you think see your updates? How about Google+? No one talks about this because there isn’t some big, bad formula to blame.

Is 16% really that bad? No way.

The Solutions

Of course, you also need to do your due diligence to make sure that you’re reaching as many of your fans as you can organically. Don’t post updates blindly. Use your Facebook Insights and analyze posts made during the past three months that were made in specific 15-minute windows. Which had the highest reach? Which were lowest?

Insights can be a great tool to strategically determine when you should post (and what you should post) to reach the largest possible audience.

Your Thoughts?

The post Your Facebook Posts Reach 16% of Fans… THE HORROR! appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.