Fantastic post from Copyblogger on where we stand (as of Dec 2012 since Facebook is constantly changing things up) on Facebook and its paid marketing platform…
The State of Facebook: What’s Working Now | Copyblogger: “Facebook constantly changes. Not all of those changes work the way they’re supposed to. And the user experience may not be the same from page to page.
Everyone’s audience is different, and responds to different types of content. So watch your own statistics, try different things, and track your results. The magic formula is creating the good content and engaging updates that your audience craves.”
In all of our work with Facebook and various marketing campaigns, the one rule we keep trying to communicate to our clients is that Facebook alone is not a silver bullet to more conversions, signups, sales or engagement. Real success is tied to a customized program with clear goals (we call this “discovery marketing” when tied to SEO, paid search and perhaps an email newsletter).
Facebook uses an in-house formula called EdgeRank to figure out how to display posts (sponsored and organic) on users’ timelines. This is an insanely important algorithm much like Google’s constantly evolving PageRank equation that it uses to serve up search results and many other facets of its umbrella service.
EdgeRank, however, is a visible equation. Unlike PageRank, we know exactly plays into Facebook’s algorithm. And it ain’t pretty for most folks.
The reason so many business owners and marketing DIY’ers fail at Facebook Ads (or don’t have the wherewithal to climb the learning curve) is the affinity score (represented by Ue above).
What is affinity exactly? That depends on the context of course. Here, affinity refers to how often a person interacts or engages (shares, likes, clicks, etc) your content in the past. That affinity score determines the rest of the equation. Affinity determines the next steps of weight and time decay in the setup.
How do you raise your affinity score to increase engagement?
Short answer is you don’t.
You start with compelling content geared at the right audiences and find the right balance of visual content, audio content, text content and ad buying decisions.
It’s a little moneyball, a little algebra and a lot of sticktoitiveness.
However, like all social media marketing, it’s doable.
And it’s exciting and organic.
And that’s what we do. Our goal is to buy wins.
