Facebook update: Promotional guidelines change

Facebook sent out a release on Wednesday morning saying that they have updated their Pages Terms in order to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to create and administer promotions on Facebook.

Here’s what Page administrators need to know:

• They’ve removed the requirement that promotions on Facebook only be administered through apps / tabs on the fan page
• Now, promotions may be administered on Page Timelines and in apps on Facebook. For example, brands can now:

• Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post
• Collect entries by having users message the Page
• Utilize likes as a voting mechanism
• As before, however, businesses cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines (i.e. the brand manager who has 1,000 friends cannot run the promo from the personal profile)
• Accurate tagging is required in promotions

In order to maintain the accuracy of Page content, Facebook’s Pages Terms now prohibit Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. So, for instance:

• It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize
• It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize

However, we don’t see a problem with pages asking fans to tag themselves in a photo purely to gain more engagement where there is no competition running.

In a nutshell you can now run a competition on the page wall itself, however creating a promotion with an app on Facebook allows a Page to create a more personalised experience, more in line with a brand’s strategy and corporate identity. Apps provide more space and flexibility for content than Page posts alone. Promotions run through apps can collect data in a secure, structured way that may be appealing to advertisers, particularly larger brands, while creating a promotion with a Page is faster and easier. Additionally, as with all Page posts, Page posts about promotions are eligible to be displayed in the News Feeds of the people who like the Page and can be promoted to a broader audience.

Each campaign and objective will be different but a mix of an app and page competition with a media budget will yield good results for building a database and spreading the word.

For more info see here

Welcome to Popimedia

Booking Facebook media made simple - meedee8 integrates into the Facebook ads API

meedee8 has released an upgrade that incorporates access to the Facebook Ads Application Programming Interface (API). This provides agencies and brands with an intelligent and seamless solution to book their Facebook ads, which are automatically optimized, instead of having to struggle to make sense of the complex and wide-ranging options that Facebook provides.
 
Marketers are faced with an ever increasing and overwhelming range of products from Facebook, and are required to choose from an array of over 60 permutations of placements and ad types to run their campaign.
 
For the past two years, Popimedia, Africa’s only Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD), have used their meedee8 tool to provide agencies and brands with a managed and accountable approach to Community Management, providing detailed insights into their Facebook Page Management strategy.
 
“It provides enormous insights into your social media pages on Facebook and Twitter,” says Gil Sperling, chief technology officer at Popimedia, of which meedee8 is a subsidiary. “The system’s features allow clients to monitor pages via a dashboard interface, flag and tag comments, preload content and receive insights – including growth, content and engagement quality, demographics and team collaboration, to name a few.”
 
Now, meedee8’s upgrade with Facebook’s ads API provides marketers with an objective-driven workflow to build a media campaign, for which meedee8 then selects the best Facebook products, copy and creative to achieve the business objective. The ad’s are further optimized on the fly ensuring best ROI at all times.
 
“Targeting the right audience for your campaign is possible via the wide reach that Facebook offers and by the deep insights that meedee8 offers,” says Sperling. “meedee8 now ensures the full life cycle of marketing is taken care of, right from objectives, targeting and ad type through to conversion, ensuring you get the best ROI for your spend.”
 
The results so far…
The meedee8 Facebook ads API component is currently being used in-house with a number of existing clients. The results are showing Cost Per Clicks (CPC) in the region of R0,72 to R4.45 and Cost Per Fans (CPF) in the region of R2,69 to R11. This is considerably better than the industry norm of R9 and R15 respectively.
 
“Brands and companies should be considering Facebook as a marketing platform rather than a social platform,” says Sperling. “Facebook should be used to drive boardroom-level metrics such as beers sold, contracts opened, home loans taken, churn reduced, or any objective relevant to the business. 

Social metrics such as ‘likes’ and engagement are the lower level metrics used to achieve the boardroom-level metrics and can be irrelevant on their own for a business. Tools like the meedee8 allow for these kinds of metrics to be understood and expressed, so that true value can be derived from Facebook campaigns.”


About Popimedia
Popimedia Innovations is a social media and technology company that builds and sells marketing solutions to brands locally and abroad. Competencies encompass amongst others; holistic strategy; media buying (direct); community management; application and platform development. The agency’s proprietary systems are designed to deliver ROI from social networks or mobile devices to point of sale.
Popimedia is Africa's only Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer PMD and 1 of 260 such companies in the world. The PMD program is a community of best-in-class developers focused on making social marketing easier and more effective. 

Issued on behalf of Popimedia by Headlines
Popimedia
0861-767-393
www.popimedia.com

Headlines
+27 11 887 3422www.headlinespr.co.za

Facebook Custom Audiences & Lookalike Audiences

Ryan talks about Facebook Custom Audiences & Lookalike Audiences.

How I survive as a Community Manager

by Rose Kotze

I’ve read many ‘How To Manage Your Community In The Best, Most Super Way’ blog posts, but for anyone who doesn’t poop rainbows 24/7 or actively enjoys being cursed at by perfect strangers – these can often be misleading. Basically, I rely on three fundamental pieces of information to help me through the veritable minefield that is social media management. And here they are:

Think of your community as a party, and you’re the host!

It’s a universal (and mostly unpleasant) truth that it’s hard work to host a party that doesn’t suck. Keeping the guest loo stocked with toilet paper, making sure nobody puts the dog in the microwave, dealing with that friend hysterically crying while downing entire mouthfuls of straight vodka because her ex just walked in with a really hot nineteen year old… it’s tough work. Tough work that needs to be managed with the grace of Princess Di, before she got dumped by Charles for Camilla.

If we’re going to beat this metaphor to the ground, as a host the community manager needs to ensure everything at her party runs smoothly. She needs to maintain conversations and solve problems that come up before fists fly. She must acknowledge all of her fans with warmth and genuine interest – kind of like how you’d engage that Aunt who smells like cat wee and Listerine, but whose will is a major draw card. It also helps to think of your content as well thought out, gourmet canapés – even if the party is meh they’ll encourage people to return. Which brings me to my next point:

Be relevant!

Harlem Shake? Goats? Sit down. Like those canapés you want your content to evoke that kind of jealous awe present when one thin, hot girl encounters another thinner, hotter girl. Remember memes have a thirty minute shelf life, if that. Post about current events the day of or the day after. Nobody cares about Adele’s heinous dress at the Grammys anymore.

Remember, it’s nothing personal!

You just get those people. Those people who whinge about seeing adverts on their timeline.  Those people who ask for free things. Those people who insult you, your mum and your kitten in a 500 word tirade that they’ve copied and pasted on every single one of your posts. When dealing with this sort of abuse on a frequent basis, it’s easy to lose your positive outlook and consider giving it all up for a life of finger-painting and selling falafels at your neighbourhood craft market. Don’t let this happen! The kind of person who has the time to dedicate hours a day moaning on social media is the kind of person who got picked last for PE in grade five because they smelt kind of weird. Keeping a cheerful, positive attitude is a wonderful way to turn a negative experience into a positive one. Not really, but at least you can go home safe in the knowledge that your life is almost certainly better than Sonja van Pantoffel from Benoni’s. But seriously, when managing communities, it’s important to not let negative comments or experiences get you down.

Facebook Finally Adds 'Reply' Option to Comments

by Camilla Gildenhuys


Facebook announced yesterday that, after months of testing, the 'Reply' option is being rolled out to comments. Community Managers everywhere rejoice!

In their statement they said:

We've built a new feature that will improve the quality of conversation on your page: Replies. Starting today, you will be able to reply directly to comments left on your page and start a conversation thread. The most active and engaging conversations will be shown at the top of your posts.

There are 2 ways that we see Replies aiding us in everyday community management and page appearance:

1. Community managers can directly address fans comments and queries in a post: This allows one-to-one type engagement with fans even through there are multiple conversations occurring on a single post. It "will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected," said Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook's journalism program manager, in an official blog post
2. The best conversations will be viewed: Facebook's algorithm allows for the best conversations to be seen at the top of the post. In this way fans won't wade through tens and hundred of comments, they'll get what they may want to see right under the post itself. Now, we still have to see what Facebook deems 'the best' (whether it be most replies from brand, other people, etc) but we're hoping it sits in the brand's favour. In saying this, we recommend that negative sentiment and commentary be taken offline to avoid highlighting of damaging conversations. 

You can start using Replies from today! There will be a banner under the Page's Admin Panel prompting you to 'turn on' Replies. If you don't opt in now, Facebook will do it for you automatically on 10 July 2013.

Replies is currently only available on desktop, but will be made available on mobile in the future.

Facebook updates their cover image policy

by Camilla Gildenhuys

We're happy to announce that Facebook has updated their policy regarding cover images which results in an anything goes approach. Well, to a degree...
This is the previous policy regarding cover images:

Cover photos cannot include:
A. Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”.
B. Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.
C. References to Facebook features or actions, such as Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
D. Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”.
Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property.

So really that left a picture with perhaps the brand logo and campaign name. 

This is the latest statement released by Facebook on 11 March 2013:

What are the guidelines for my Page's cover photo?

All cover photos are public. Anyone who visits your Page will be able to see the cover photo. Cover photos can't be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else's copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover photo to their personal timelines.

Cover photos must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not include images with more than 20% text.

So really it means that Facebook don't mind if you promote your business, a campaign or an application in the copy, just as long as it doesn't exceed 20% of the image.

Here's a way to determine whether your image is using 20% or more or less, from socialfresh.com:

If you overlay a 5×5 grid onto your image, and your text fills more than 5 boxes of the 25, it will fall foul of Facebook

This passes muster

This doesn’t.

In conclusion, remember Facebook's general advice on posting images to maximise engagement:

• Photos should include real people and real things. User sentiment research shows that emotions triggered by images of real people, real situations, and real objects, are more lasting and compelling than those with words or text.
• Text or text overlay should be minimal. Text in photos from friends is rare, so text in photos from brands is seen as inauthentic and generates negative reactions.
• Brand logos, campaign slogans, and taglines should be used sparingly. Consider using a photo of your product in action instead of overlaying your brand logo or slogan on an unrelated image.
• Keep it simple.