Category Archive for "Facebook"

Facebook’s 20% Text Rule on Images has Changed

Posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2017 at 1:30 pm.

If you have struggled with the strict 20% rule regarding the amount of text advertisers can have on their Facebook Ads, you will be relieved to know that Facebook has rolled out a change to this policy. Although don’t be surprised that if you want more text you will pay more.

Previously you could only have 20% of your ad covered with text. Facebook has admitted that Advertisers have found the 20% rule confusing and has decided to roll out a new policy so that your ads will no longer be rejected for having too much text. However, the more text in your image, you can expect less reach and higher costs.
Images will no longer be broken up into a 5×5 grid. Going forward, Facebook breaks down text density into four categories:

OK
Low
Medium
High

With the 20% rule, an advertiser who used a grid tool on their images would always know where their image falls (more or less than 20%) and therefore if it would be approved or not. Now it’s a matter of Facebook determining whether the amount of text is OK, Low, Medium or High.

Facebook's updated grid tool so that you can upload your images and get immediate feedback on where they determine text density falls. If you create your ads in Power Editor, you will be given a warning that lets you know if the amount of text in your image may limit distribution.

Examples of the four text density categories:

Image Text: OK

Facebook still prefers little or no text in an image.

Image Text: Low

These ads are considered to have moderate text. Each of these ads have most of their copy in the text box, but there's still some copy directly on the images in each of them.

Image Text: Medium

facebook example of medium amount of text

Image Text: High

While this ad will get approved, Facebook will severely restrict its reach and charge high costs.

In summary, although the policy has changed, Facebook still prefers little or no text and if you want maximum reach you would be best to adhere to this.

At Cre8ive we implement and manage Facebook and Instagram Advertising campaigns for clients. If you would like to know more please email.

Understanding Facebook’s Newsfeed

Posted on Friday, June 17th, 2016 at 1:41 pm.

Written by Philippa Crick

Our Director, Philippa Crick, did a presentation to the tourism group Dunedin Host at the end of May, on how tourism businesses can use social media better for improved Return of Investment.
Watch this short clip from the presentation, that explains more about how the Newsfeed works in Facebook.

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Get Ready for the latest Facebook Changes for Business Pages

Posted on Monday, November 30th, 2015 at 1:32 pm.

Written by Philippa Crick

Facebook introduces new features and updates on a regular basis and it's hard to keep up. However, here are some key changes you should be aware of:

1. The design layout of all business pages is changing:Existing
  
  will become
  
  Be prepared for these changes that will happen within the next few months.
2. Improving Ad Performance with the Carousel Format for Images
  Last year, Facebook began to roll out the carousel format for Facebook ads, which let advertisers showcase multiple images and links in one ad. Since then, Facebook has reported that advertisers have seen carousel link ads drive 30-50% lower cost-per-conversion than single-image link ads.Advertisers can display 3-5 images with separate links and Facebook believes that the carousel format is attention-grabbing and helpful for both direct response and brand awareness marketing.
  Within this single advert you can direct people to specific locations on your website.
  
  Tip: Your imagery should always look high-quality – keep to image sizes and text length:
  • Recommended image size: 600 x 600 pixels
  • Image ratio: 1:1
  • Text: 90 characters
  • Headline: 40 characters
  • Link description: 20 characters
  
  Be careful when adding text to your post images as you cannot have more than 20% text. See how much text is on your image.

Facebook Mobile Version Call to Action Button

1. The Call-to-Action mobile button changed
  The mobile version of your Facebook Page now has a Call-to-Action (CTA) button directly under the page cover image. It is now bigger, brighter and more prominent.
  You can either have a link to your website or you can add a ‘call button’. The downside of this improvement is that once you add the phone option, the desktop version of your Facebook page does not have a ‘Contact Us’ CTA anymore. The Website Button is shown on all devices however. We have created a guide on how to set up your call to action.
  
  The two Desktop Versions:
  
  - Website Link included
  
  - When you add the phone number, the link disappears

New Shop & Service Sections
Facebook rolled out two new sections for every business mobile page.
The Shop section helps retail businesses bring their products to the forefront of their Page, while the new Services section enables service businesses to showcase their offerings at the top of their Page. For example, a spa can add their services menu to their Page or highlight the line of products they sell, helping people get to know their business faster.

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12 Social Media Tips for Christmas Promotion

Posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2015 at 1:04 pm.

Written by Philippa Crick

As the countdown to Christmas is on, now is the perfect time to really ramp up your social media marketing efforts with the goal to see a spike in revenue with our 12 social media tips for Christmas promotion.

1. Establish your Goals
  How can you measure your success if you don't know what you want to achieve? Examples of goals might be to increase sales, increase volume of website traffic or have more newsletter sign ups. Use website statistics such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.
2. Create a Content Calendar
  Reduce stress and errors by preparing in advance your content and when it will go live.
  Begin with key dates, special offers and events you may have planned etc. There is no right or wrong answer as to when to post or how much to post but establishing a regular cadence that your audience can come to rely on is a great start. However in saying that, an indication for Students is not to post on Friday/Saturday as they don't tend to be on Facebook as much then.
3. Try Facebook advertising
  Did you know that only 2% of your fans will see your posts on Facebook? As a low cost way to increase your audience reach you should experiment with Facebook ads.
  This highly targeted form of advertising is an ideal way to ensure important posts are seen by your fans or others in your target market.
  Each ad you create, you can choose how much you want to bid to have your ad shown to your target audience as well as the option between cost per click (CPC) or cost per 1000 impressions (CPM). Budget control is completely at your discretion.
  To give you an idea of what you might pay, Statista reports that in Q3 of 2014, ecommerce businesses saw an average cost per click of $US 0.49 on Facebook.
4. Don't forget Twitter
  If your target market uses Twitter, then it will be just as important as Facebook for building an engaged audience.Zaggora, a fitness wear brand, held a contest on Twitter for Christmas. They asked followers to post a hilarious photo showing off their Christmas gifts.
  Entry criteria was simple: use the #zaggora hashtag to enter. The winner received a selection of Zaggora fitness clothes. It was a very simple yet successful campaign for them, increasing their brand and product visibility.
  
  Last year there were over 282 million Tweets from around the world about holiday shopping. The Twitter Business Blog contains some interesting stats for the upcoming holiday season:
  
  of Twitter users are likely to purchase something from a small business they follow on Twitter
  
  of Twitter users are likely to Tweet about their holiday purchases
  
  of Twitter users are planning to use Twitter for holiday shopping

1. Follow the 80/20 Rule  of social media posting
  Ensure that 80% of your tweets/posts drive interaction and offer value to your followers. The other 20% use for direct offers or ‘selling’ type messages. Facebook is cracking down on 'overly promotional' organic posts so if you post too often "Buy now", "Join now", "Sale on now" and so on, less and less of your fans will see these messages. Read our article about overly promotional posts.
2. Get Creative with your Imagery
  Attract interest by creating customised Christmas cover images/backgrounds/post images for each social media platform.

Give Tips for Christmas that are tailored to your audience
Try to focus on providing some genuinely helpful information such as weather forecasts, gift ideas, travel tips and Christmas recipes. Find a way to tie these themes into your business and promoting your product and how it can be used during the festive season.See this example from Thermomix, which produces a multi-function kitchen aid, where they created a festive drink to promote their product without actually mentioning it or any reference to purchasing.
Respond Rapidly
Gone are the days of getting back to your clients in 24 hours. Today you’ve got to make every effort to get back to them within 1-2 hours - this applies not just to email but to social media messages as well.
Different demographic groups use different social media platforms
Adjust your posts/tweets and imagery for each individual platform and target market. What works in Facebook may not work in Twitter.
Run a contest
Creating a contest is a great way to engage your audience and generate content on your social media site; incentivise your target market to sign up to your database by offering a prize or deal.
Create a Facebook App
To make your e-mail audience bigger, create a Facebook App and encourage your visitors to sign up there. You can also promote special deals and offers through this tool.
Drive Traffic
Most important of all, use Social Media to drive traffic to your website. When posting or tweeting include a link back to your website, when relevant.

If you need assistance with your social media marketing whether it be planning content ideas or Christmas imagery, please call  03 474 1075 or email Philippa.

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Facebook Advertising: Should You Boost or Promote?

Posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015 at 11:41 am.

Written by Philippa Crick

With Facebook organic reach on the decline businesses must seriously consider paying for their posts to appear in the news feeds of their fans. Don’t pay for every post however, choose the best ones. What are the options?

Boosting a post is the most straightforward option.
When you’re publishing your post you can simply choose to boost by clicking the ‘Boost Post’ button in the lower right corner of your post. Boosting posts is the quickest and easiest way to increase the reach of posts that need to be seen soon, for example latest news and links with rich media like photos or videos.

After you click ‘boost’ you then have the option of “People who like your page and their friends” or “People you choose through targeting.”

One problem with choosing the first option is that your fans’ friends may not be interested in your business and may not be located in the area you want to target. Which means you may be wasting your budget by paying for your post to appear in their news feed.

If your goal is to engage your current fans, don’t choose the first option. You’re better off using a promoted post and choosing that the ad only go to your community. However, if you’ve already boosted a post to fans and their friends, you can still change your audience. Just go to your Ads Manager and turn off the segment of the ad that goes out to friends of fans.

If your goal is to drive some targeted traffic to your website, or reach a new audience, then choose the second audience option ‘People you choose through targeting’.

When you boost a post, the ad results show up in your Facebook Ads Manager where you can access the results and run more detailed reports.

Tips for Which Content to Boost
Make sure you only promote your own content and direct traffic back to your website, not someone else’s.

Select content that’s helpful for your audience. Highlighting sales messages from time to time is acceptable but primarily choose content that will be of value for your audience.

Content that should definitely be promoted is where you harvest email addresses. If you’re offering something for free with an opt-in, definitely promote that content so you can transfer as many fans to your email list as possible.

It’s important to note that Facebook has guidelines about images only having ‘20% text on photos’. If your post has a link in it and the link pulls in a photo that has too much text, you won’t be able to boost or promote it.

Promoting a Facebook Post
This is achieved via the Facebook Ads Manager and gives you more options when it comes to targeting, budget and bidding options. For example, this method allows more options regarding the audience you want to reach, and allows you to pay per click or set a daily limit. The results are also shown in Ads Manager. On the downside, setting up a promoted post takes more time and requires some forward planning.

To promote a post, go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ and select Page Post Engagement. Use the drop-down menus to choose the page and the exact post you want to promote.

You will see the ‘Offer Claims’ use this option if you want to promote some kind of deal. With one of our clients, Back in Motion, we offered 50% off massage for new clients and this method worked well – over 75 people ‘claimed the offer’ where they received an email. (Facebook generated an automatic email with information we provided).

So it is better to boost or promote?
It really depends on the type of post and timing. Many marketers use the boost post option because it’s easy and accessible. This doesn’t necessarily make it the best option to reach the perfect audience however. If you have the time and you have a really great piece of content you want to push, promoted posts should be employed first as it allows more control over who sees your ad and how you pay for it.

If you would like help setting up an advert or campaign, call 03 474 1075 or email cre8ive@cre8ive.co.nz

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Be Wise with your Facebook Cover Image

Posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2015 at 11:18 am.

Written by Philippa Crick

Few tactics are as effective at conveying a brand personality and encouraging engagement on social media as a carefully selected image. In this fast-paced-scroll world of social media, the visual images are the first thing your audience sees and it might be the one thing they remember.

In the two Facebook cover images shown below, which cafe would you frequent? I imagine within less than a second you will have made your mind up about which you prefer based on the image the cafes have chosen to represent themselves.

This example below shows how the owners have so much to say they have simply put EVERYTHING onto their cover image which has effectively made it impossible to take anything in. Keep your message simple and use the description tool to add extra copy in.

To optimise your social presence, you must ensure that the images you’re using to represent your brand are high quality and the best fit for the various networks. To help, we’ve outlined the best image sizes for Facebook (desktop and mobile) and image type.

Your Facebook Page’s profile picture:
Displays at 160 x 160 pixels on computers, 140 x 140 pixels on smartphones and 50 x 50 pixels on most feature phones.
However, the image must be at least 180 x 180 pixels. Your image will be cropped to fit a square.
Ideally we recommend using your logo here or part of your logo that is easily identifiable. Businesses often make the mistake of inserting an image that works on a desktop on the actual Facebook page but in the fan’s newsfeed it becomes unidentifiable.

Your Facebook Page’s cover photo:
– Displays at 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high on computers
– 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels high on smartphones.
– Doesn’t display on feature phones.
Ideally you want to achieve a fast load so supply the file as an sRGB JPG file that’s 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100 kilobytes.
For profile pictures and cover photos that display your logo or text, you may get a better result by using a PNG file.

See our handy reference visual below which indicates the areas that aren’t visible in mobile views. Remember to keep all critical information out of these areas.

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Call-to-Action Button on Facebook

Posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2015 at 9:28 pm.

Written by admin

Facebook have announced a new call-to-action feature designed with the intention to help drive business objectives. The new buttons will allow users to complete a range of actions. Page Admins can select from seven calls to action which are:

Book Now
Contact Us
Use App
Play Game
Shop Now
Sign Up
Watch Video

To set up your ‘button’ simply click on the ‘create’ button next to ‘Share’ and the Facebook wizard will take you through the short steps.
create-call-to-action

First step is to choose your action.

Decide if you would like iOS and Android users to visit the same web page or would you rather them be linked to your app if you have one.
Once saved the column on the right hand side will now have an additional section showing the name of the button you created and how many fans have clicked on the call-to-action.
measure.

To find out more visit facebook.com/business

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