Facebook Are Now 1 Click Away from Your Credit Card

Many of you will have noticed Facebook now offer the ability to promote your post right from inside your fan page with 1 click of a button.  This has made it easier for us marketers to reach more people with our posts through a paid promotion and easier for Facebook to dip into our pockets. 

After a ton of criticism and share price misery, Facebook’s IPO has made it essential for them to monetize their platform.  This sneaky little drop down has made it a million times easier for business owners to advertise.  Most of the small businesses owners I’ve spoke to don’t even know ‘how’ to advertise on Facebook. 

Below is a screen shot of what the drop down will reveal.  If you have purchased advertising befor your credit card will be saved.  You can then promote your post with just 1 click! This is the same monetization strategy that Apple (amongst others) has used on their App Store and iTunes, Facebook are hoping this will be a big money spinner for them.

There is another really cool new feature that lets us look, at a glance; how many people your post has reached, either organically or virally. 

Organic = Fans reached through the actual post created

Viral = Users reached through a story created about the post in the news feed

We can see in the screen shot that the analytics at first glance tells you how many people you have reached and what percentage of fans have seen your post.  This is a great real-time insight for business owners but I can see why some may get confused.  Let me go through some simple calculations.

Take the screen shot above for example.  719 People reached – 35% (of fans reached).  This Fan Page has 1623 Fans so 35% of 1623 is 568.  So how did they reach the extra 152?  This is all down to the ‘viral’ reach of the post.  Here’s an expanded view of the analytics when hovering your mouse over.  It gives you a breakdown of organic and viral reach.

For every fan that likes, comments or shares the post a story is created, this story is then seen by their friends, some of which will also interact with the post.

Imagine if you sent an e-mail to all your friends with some interesting content. Some of them enjoy it and pass it on to their friends.  The additional amounts of friends that would see your e-mail have been reached virally because you wouldn’t have been able to reach them directly yourself. Now just swap the e-mail for a Facebook post and that explains the new stats you see.

I hope you’re now a little clearer on what these numbers now mean. It’s important to keep your eye on these stats, the higher your viral reach the better, as more ‘new’ users are viewing your posts and will increase your likes and engagement.  If anyone happens to reach 100% of the fans on their fan page without advertising, please, post a screen shot on my Fan Page wall!

Comments are welcome…..are you going to be promoting your page posts?