Now that Facebook Promoted Posts are available to help you reach more of your fans, what types of content should you promote? Facebook would undoubtedly tell you to promote everything. But you need to discriminate.
As a business, you need to understand the value of your content. Not all Facebook posts are created equal: Some are fluff filler and some lead directly to business goals. You need to pinpoint those items that lead to business goals and reach as many of your fans as you can.
Here are five different types of content that should be candidates for use of Facebook Promoted Posts.
Facebook Offers
You created an awesome Facebook Offer that gives 50% off on a high-demand item and shared it with your 3,000 fans. Problem is that no one is claiming it.
Even worse, only 12% of your fans have even seen it. This at least tells you that your problem isn’t necessarily an undesirable Offer, but a matter of reaching the masses.
The purpose of a Facebook Offer is to cause buzz and increase foot traffic into your store. You need fans claiming your Offer so that their friends see it and claim as well. A good way to push that along is to promote a Facebook Offer with Promoted Posts.
Contests
If no one enters your contest, is there a contest at all?
This is always the fear of brands with modest Facebook audiences. What if you create a contest and no one enters? How embarrassing!
Once again, you may create a desirable contest, but your biggest obstacle may simply be getting seen. Create your contest with ShortStack and then design a post that shares a link to that Facebook tab. Then use Promoted Posts to reach as many of your fans during a three day period as you can.
Potentially Viral Content
You created a great video that you feel could go viral. The more people who see it, the more people who will know your brand. This is a great opportunity!
Videos do not become viral by themselves. You need to give them a push. Sure, you can share them to all of your social networks and send a dedicated email announcing the video. You link to it all over your site. But what if that isn’t enough?
You don’t want to repeatedly share it to your Facebook Page. That’s bad form. But you can use Promoted Posts and encourage your fans to share it!
Subscriptions, Contacts and Sign-ups
High value content includes anything that can lead either directly or indirectly to revenue. Examples include getting people to subscribe to your newsletter, providing an email address in exchange for an EBook, filling out a contact form or signing up for a product or service.
One of your goals is to constantly build your email list or pipeline (I use AWeber). Therefore, any type of content that encourages this behavior is of high value to you. You should therefore invest in using Promoted Posts for this content.
Create a blog post or landing page on your site. Maybe create a tab on your Facebook Page. Then craft a post that drives people to it and push as much traffic to it as you can with Promoted Posts.
Sale Products
This one is last, but probably the most obvious. There’s certainly value in investing in promotion of a product or service that leads directly to revenue.
Share a link to a particularly popular sale item. It needs to be something that generates high demand. It could also be as simple as writing a status update to announce a store-wide sale for a particular day. Then use Promoted Posts to help expose that sale to your fans, who will then spread to their friends.
What Else?
In the end, you should consider spending money to promote content that will return at least identical value. What other types of content would you promote or have you promoted with Facebook Promoted Posts? Share your examples in the comments below!
