Promoted Posts on facebook – Be Careful!

Written by: Gary Horsman

Promoted Posts on facebook – Be Careful!

Be careful promoting posts (advertising) on facebook. To provide you with my insights on this let’s compare YouTube (a Google social media website which does is right) to facebook. YouTube is set up nicely for creators, viewers and advertisers. Moreover, on YouTube creators can be paid for every view of their content.

On facebook it’s the opposite – creators have to pay for views.

Let’s examine this.

Facebook vs YouTube

People go to YouTube and facebook for very different reasons.

People go to YouTube to be entertained to see videos on cool new things and for education (I know I do). People go to facebook to catch up with friends and family, to share pictures and to share messages. Friends and family are the main draw on facebook.

Another big difference is that on facebook the view per item is typically very short. A museum, for example, could set up a facebook page and upload some nice content but people will not tend to engage with that content for long. In contrast, if the museum uploaded some interesting and educational (and perhaps even entertaining) videos on YouTube people would be likely to engage and for longer periods of time. After all they have gone to YouTube looking for something interesting or educational – they most likely even searched for this.

The last point on the time/engagement factor is very significant and perhaps the biggest reason why you need to be careful with your marketing efforts on facebook. Let’s again compare and contrast.

On YouTube the content creators are relatively few and the advertisers are companies that want to display their ads next to or associated with the content that aligns with their brand or product. For example, I am in the process of reviewing 4K video cameras and searched for videos on this topic. I am presented with ads for photography equipment and 4K cameras – it makes sense and I like seeing the ads and now have some extra items in my “wish list”. I like that I searched for video reviews for 4K cameras and have now been introduced to new ideas via the ads – this is fine.

The largest interested party on YouTube is the viewer and the roles on YouTube are distinct and the crossover of roles is not significant. Content creators create, advertisers set up ads and viewers view the content and the ads. These roles are implicit.

 The Roles on facebook are Confused

On facebook everyone is a content creator, everyone is a viewer and now everyone can be an advertiser (with the ability to promote posts). This is the problem with facebook. They cannot figure out how to make money with their huge user base unless they use a model where you need to promote your posts to get any real exposure.

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Another issue I have with facebook is that people don’t click on the sidebar ads. This is primarily because people to not go to facebook to shop or to conduct product research. Published studies show that the click-through rate is only 0.05% at best. The click-through rates on the sidebar ads on Google are more than 20 times higher and that’s because people do go to Google to shop and conduct product research.

On YouTube a recent study By AOL Platforms shows YouTube is the best social platform for introducing new products and influencing customers’ purchasing decisions. YouTube is effective at the start of the funnel and at the end of the funnel.

The people at Quora have studied thousands of YouTube channels and have seen click through rates (CTR) as high as 4%. Anything over 1% I consider good.

The facebook CTR is much lower and the main reason is that – as I noted above – people typically do not think of conducting product research on facebook.

If you promote your business on YouTube then consider specific videos for a specific business focus. Here is a series of 4 videos where the business created 4 specific videos each with its own focus. The business is a small jewelry shop. The videos are all short (the longest is 42 seconds) and to the point. These are perfect for YouTube.

In Conclusion

Be careful promoting posts (advertising) on facebook. If you do then be sure to measure your results so that you can see what works and what needs improvement and use this measurement knowledge to do the best possible job with any promoted posts.

Also, help people to go to your center of content (your website and/or blog) with any social media content or advertisements. Set goals and measure performance and then make adjustments.

Consider marketing on YouTube if you have educational content that people would be interested in seeing via a video.

When you drive them to your center of content be sure to use a landing page to maximize engagement once they land on your center of content. To learn more about landing pages whether used for facebook or YouTube marketing click here.