Between privacy concerns, the purposeful killing off of organic Reach, and changing targeting options (due to GDPR), the “whats” and “hows” of making the most of your Facebook business presence seem to change daily.
Here’s an overview of 7 of the most important recent changes.
The Latest with Facebook
– You have fewer ad targeting options. You may even be forced to alter saved audiences before using them again. Any type of targeting that you were using that pulled from “partner categories” (i.e. third party sources outside of Facebook) can no longer be used. This includes many of the Behaviors (e.g. purchase behaviors) as well as demographics like homeownership and finances. Facebook will flag any saved audiences you plan to use and force you to modify them before placing your ad.
– Organic reach is again redefined. We’ve gone through this a few times already. Facebook notifies us that it’s improving the way it calculates Reach to match other Reach metrics on the platform and to accurately reflect the number of people who actually saw that post vs. the number of people who had that post placed in their news feed (but didn’t necessarily scroll down far enough to see it).
– Facebook wants us to get users to engage with our posts through liking, commenting or sharing Tied into the previous point, this Facebook recommendation does not match what I’ve been seeing. I’ll have posts with dozens of reactions and over a dozen Shares, and the Reach will be something like 342. The math on this simply doesn’t make sense. It’s definitely frustrating when you give Facebook exactly what it says it wants but still aren’t rewarded accordingly.
– GDPR is in full effect. You’ve likely received privacy updates from Facebook and Instagram (since Facebook owns Instagram) on how each platform handles your data. GDPR implementation also impacts website admins who have a Facebook pixel installed on their site. Even if you don’t sell to people in the EU, someone from the EU could navigate to your website on the internet. So, if you haven’t started getting GDPR compliant, begin by adding a privacy policy to your website that includes information on the data you collect on your website and how it’s used, plus consider adding plugins to your site (if you are on WordPress) that activate certain additional features for EU visitors. You can read more about these here: http://bit.ly/2JPsYhW
– Opting-out of personalized ads doesn’t stop you from seeing ads Some users may be concerned about how their data is used and choose to proactively opt-out of personalized ads. However, it’s important to know that no user can stop ads from being shown to them. They’ll simply start seeing irrelevant ads in their feeds.
– Post Templates, Instagram Photo Suggestions, and A/B Audience Testing You may already have seen one or more of these new features pop up on your Page. Facebook, while hammering Pages on their organic Reach, continues to roll out new features for managing and optimizing your Page and posts. Recently, I’ve spotted the option to choose 1 of 3 posting templates (Introduce your Business, Introduce your Employees, and Share your Story) located above the New Post area, I’ve been given the ability to tap to add a recent Instagram photo into a new Facebook post from the New Post area, and Twitter user Matt Navarra shared this screen shot of the currently-being-tested A/B audience split test feature.
– Configure Page Messaging Settings Not the same thing as building a ChatBot, you can visit your Page’s Settings –> Messaging for some basic but helpful response assistant and appointment assistant options.
The changes coming to Facebook have been much more frequent than normal. With the online landscape forever changed due to GDPR + the nearly non-existent organic Reach, the position of Facebook as a mayor player in your online marketing strategy may be changing as well.
