Facebook + Promote = promotion superstar

Promotion. To small businesses this means spreading the word and driving interest about products, services or the company itself. Traditionally this was done by placing ads in local newspapers and on the radio, tv or the Internet. Facebook has changed all that and is now one of the top ways to promote. A new feature has been added that makes it even easier to run a promotion campaign on Facebook.

The feature is called “Promote” and aims to give businesses a way to increase the reach of their posts. Think of it as a simplification process: instead of having to go through the ad dashboard to create an ad, it can now be done with one click.

The idea behind the promote button is to turn posts on your Page into ads that show up on a user’s News Feed – the area where posts are viewed – instead of in the ad bar, which is located on the right hand side of the page. This will, in theory, help your promotion or information reach more users while making marketing and advertising easier.

When you create a post, you can press the Promote button, located at the bottom of the post window. A pop-up window will appear giving you options. As this is a form of paid advertising, you pay to reach a guaranteed number of users. When you enter an amount to pay, (USD 5.00 is the lowest amount), you’ll be given the approximate number of fans the post will reach. You’ll also be able to target demographically and geographically. The post will be promoted for three days.

Once the promotion campaign has started, you’ll be able to view how effective the promotion is by going to your Page timeline and hovering over the numbers at the bottom of the promoted post. You’ll also be able to see how many users the post has reached, and how they viewed it. A useful tool to tell if the Promote feature is actually working.

At this time, the Promote feature is available for Page owners located in the US with more than 400 followers, and should be rolled out to all Page owners in the near future. If you’d like to learn more about the Promote feature, or other ways you can utilize Facebook as a marketing tool, please contact us.