by samAs I am sure every single one of you is aware, Facebook has made some pretty radical changes in the last couple of months. There have been layout changes, chat box changes, and privacy changes, but what you may not have noticed is they have also made some tweaks to how advertising on Facebook works. To create an environment that fosters more brand engagement, the social media giant has developed a new ad format called the “premium.”.
The new format works quite differently; instead of an ad depicting the text and pictures of your choosing being displayed, premium ads are pieces of content that have been shared on their page. This might be a photo, a video, or even a simple status update, but the brilliant thing is that it expands to show how your friends have interacted with it.
This style of advertising on Facebook marks a real jump forward, as it gives a certain social proof value to the advert. Studies have shown time and time again that consumers are more likely to trust a company when they have seen that someone they know has approved of that business. This is a big plus for brands looking to diversify their online advertising from just using Google AdWords.
Another overhaul that you will more likely be aware of, especially if you work in SMO for an internet marketing company, are the changes that have been integrated into page insights. New metrics have been introduced that help brands more accurately judge how their SMO efforts are being received and how their content is spreading. One such feature is the “people talking about” metric, which is a brilliantly developed tool that allows you to view the number of people talking about your brand that are occurring outside of your immediate fan base. This includes any type of interaction, such as comments, tags, and even likes.
The brilliant thing is that this number is visible to anyone viewing the company’s brand. Meaning that instead of relying on simply achieving a large number of likes to value how well their social media campaign is going, internet marketing companies now have another, wider metric that measures how well their efforts are being shared. This can only mean that in order to increase these figures, they will need to create significantly more engaging, interesting, and shareable content, which sounds like a win-win for everybody.