Archive for category: Facebook

Why aren't my political Facebook ads running?
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Why Aren’t My Political Facebook Ads Running?

Political Facebook ads keep getting more and more difficult.

Once upon a time, the only thing you need to run political ads on Facebook was a business page and a credit card. The 2016 Presidential election changed all that.

Facebook has added numerous new policies to prevent misuse. Some seem well thought out… others are just absurd. But as I always say, Facebook doesn’t live in our world, we live in theirs.
So every new change or tweak they roll out, no matter how ridiculous, we must simply adapt.

To run political ads of Facebook, you — the advertiser — need to be verified. You can start that process at facebook.com/id.

Your Facebook page needs a political disclaimer.

Your organization needs to be approved.

You can find all these steps, and get started, by going to your Facebook Page and navigating to settings => Issue, Electoral or Political Ads.
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But getting everything approved isn’t exactly simple.

Here’s a fun fact: you are now required to have a website in order to run political ads on Facebook. Which is all well and good if you’re a Senate campaign, but might make less sense if you’re running for city council of a small town.

Some folks look to run ads aren’t even connected to a formal organization, but simply want to take a stand on an issue in their community. Unfortunately, the phrase “political ads” is actually quite misleading.

Facebook deems ads “political,” not just if they are from or in support of a formal political campaign, but also if they delve into a huge litany of topics including climate, LGBTQ+ issues, women’s rights… many nonprofits that don’t have anything to do with politics find themselves required to list their ads as political.

Another big issue I see campaigns make when applying for disclaimers: you must have an email address that matches your website. Meaning if your website is JoshForWisconsin.com you MUST have an email ending in @joshforwisconsin.com.

These are some serious hoops they are making down ballot candidates and tiny nonprofits jump through in order to run ads.

Check out this short thread on the issue if you’re so inclined.

But, that’s what it takes to run political ads on Facebook.

But here’s the thing, even if you do everything flawlessly, there is a decent chance you are going to set up ads, get them approved, and then watch with horror as your ad buy remains at $0.

This brutal phenomenon has been happening a lot of late.

So without further ado, here is my list of things you can troubleshoot to try and get your political Facebook ads to actually start spending once they have been approved.

Or to put it another way…

5 Reasons Your Political Facebook Ads Might Not Be Spending

First things first, all ads should be built in the ads manager (facebook.com/ads/manager). Even if you’re just “boosting posts” do it in the ads manager. You’ll have far better control and insight into your ads program when you do so.

Now that you’re in the ads manager (which is different than the ads center!), look in the top right corner at the dropdown menu and check your reporting timeframe.

Is it set to maximum? If not, it should be.

While this probably isn’t the issue, it’s by far the easiest to fix. So it makes sense to start here.

If you started your Facebook Political Ad campaign this month, but you’re looking at reporting for “last month,” it will show you haven’t spent any money, even if that’s not the case. Flip on over to maximum and see what happens.

If it shows ad spend, you’re good to go!

If not, you should check your Facebook Political Ads Disclaimer. If you don’t have a disclaimer, your political Facebook ads will definitely get rejected.

But there’s this annoying glitch where Facebook will disable your ads disclaimer, but for some reason they will still approve your political ads — they just won’t actually let you spend any money.

Go check your disclaimer.

If you get there and it says your disclaimer is disabled, you’ll need to reauthorize it. In my experience, that’s usually as simple as getting emailed a code. But, as always, YMMV.

Once it’s re-authorized, that usually solves the problem outright. If it doesn’t (meaning if after a day or two, you still aren’t spending), DON’T duplicate the campaign. But rather rebuild it from scratch. For some reason duplicating seems to drag the issue along with it. Rebuilding from scratch, in my experience, does not. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Another issue that might be at play — check and see how many disclaimers you have.

I’ve inherited accounts and realized they had more than one disclaimer set up. It’s very hard to select which disclaimer you want to use with your ad when building out your campaign — and if you wind up with a disabled one, the ads won’t spend. I find it’s better to simply delete any that you don’t need. If you have an out-of-date disclaimer, delete it, and as above, if that doesn’t work quickly, try rebuilding your ads from scratch.

There is a very good chance that this will solve your problem and your Facebook Political Ads will start spending promptly.

If you are using a custom audience (like a mailing list, or voterfile data…) it’s possible that your audience is too small to target with ads. That could be the reason your Facebook Political Ads aren’t spending. So it’s time to check your audience size.

Once upon a time, when you uploaded a custom audience into Facebook, Facebook would tell you how many people from your audience were matched. Those days are no more. (Usually. Every now and then, they will tell you. Why? ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

If your match rate is less than ~1000, your ads may get approved but they will likely not run.

Now if you’re saying to yourself, but I fed 1200 people into Facebook — I’m good… you’re probably not! Facebook’s match rate for custom audiences is never going to be 100%. Which is fair enough — not everyone on your mailing list is on Facebook. And some of them gave you their work email but use their personal email for Facebook. I’ve seen lists match at 85%. And others at 30%. It really depends on the list you are starting with.

As a rule of thumb, I assume I’m going to get between a 50%-70% match rate with Facebook custom audiences. Annoyingly, you won’t know your match rate until you start running ads. Then you can track your reach and, once you’ve spent a bit, you should have a decent sense of your list size.

But again, if you’re not spending, it might be because your audience is simply too small.

If this is the issue, you need to find a way to expand your audience size. You might not be able to target your mailing list or voterfile data. You might have to use Facebook saved audiences, where you build out an audience based on information like age, gender, location, etc.

Try targeting a larger audience and see if it starts spending. If it does, you’ve identified your issue. Great job!

​Since we’re talking about Facebook saved audiences, it’s worth mentioning that Facebook changed the data we have access to significantly in early 2022.

You used to be able to target fans of AOC, Rachel Maddow and John Oliver. You could target “liberals” and “conservatives.” You could target people interested in LGBTQ+ or climate change or people who liked Human Rights Campaign or Sierra Club.

Facebook has scrubbed all of that data from their audience builder. Why? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It’s a truly bizarre and awful move from Facebook, but again, this is their world — we just live in it. So check your targeting.

If you are trying to run ads to audiences you built before this change, there’s a possibility that they let you build the ad, and even approved it, but that they won’t actually let it run.

Go in and edit your campaign’s audience. It will show if you are currently using any data you are no longer allowed to use.

Update accordingly and this might solve your problem.

Facebook recently updated their policy on daily ad spend. They’ve always had a daily ad spend limit — especially for new accounts — but of late, I’ve found that every new account has a default daily ad spend limit of just $50. So now you need to check your daily ad spend limit.

This won’t be an issue for why you can’t spend at all — but if you’re spending keeps capping at $50 a day, despite a much larger budget, this is almost definitely why.

The good news: Facebook will help you increase your daily ad spend. Simply go to GPA Help and ask them to.

The bad news: It might take a bit. And if you’re desperately trying to GOTV in the final days of your campaign, help might not arrive in time.

To recap, here are 5 things to check if your Political Facebook Ads are approved but won’t start spending:

  • Check your reporting timeframe
  • Check your disclaimer(s)
  • Check your audience size
  • Check your targeting
  • Check your daily ad spend limit

That’s my list. If you have any other solutions to try please share them with me. We’re all in this together!

If none of the above helped, hit me up. I help progressive candidates, campaigns and organizations troubleshoot such issues all the time and I’d love to help you get your ad program up and running.

Learn more about how my team and I help progressive campaigns with digital ads and a whole lot more at joshklemons.com/politics, or drop us an email today and let’s chat.

You can also regularly find me on Twitter complaining about Facebook Ads. If you’re into that kind of thing, let’s connect!

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Likes On Social Media Are Free

This is a short episode, adapted from an article I wrote 5 years, about the importance of engaging with positive comments on social media. It’s as true today as it was the day I wrote it. So I wanted to share it with you, my podcast listeners.

​If someone goes out of their way to say something nice about you on social, and you can’t be bothered to smash that like button, you should re-evaluate why you are on social in the first place!

Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream podcasts. And scroll down for a full episode transcript.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I wrote a version of this post 5 years ago. It’s just as true today as it was then . So I wanted to share it with you, my podcast listeners.

On Friday night — five years ago — I went to see a Grammy winning bluegrass legend wow his crowd with songs spanning his 40+ year career.

Because I’m both a bluegrass nerd and a social media nerd, I streamed one of his songs via Facebook Live.

It was late on a weekend night and it didn’t get a lot of views in real time. But over the next 36 hours or so, it was watched a few dozen times. (And now I can go back and rewatch the band anytime I want on my personal Facebook page!) But truth be told, by Sunday night, I wasn’t thinking about the video anymore than I was about the drive to and from the show.

But then Monday morning, something interesting happened — my video was “liked” by the bluegrass legend it featured.

Now let’s be clear: I don’t think that this artist liked the post himself (although he might have). More likely it was a member of his marketing or management team.

But the notification that he had liked my video popped up, and I have to be honest — I got excited. Like, more excited than I probably should have.

I work in social media for a living. I know how this works. I know he probably has some marketing agency liking positive mentions of him online. But you know what: it still got its intended effect out of me!

Having him like my video felt like getting a high five or a quick hello from a bluegrass legend.

Does that digital high five mean that we are suddenly best friends? Of course not.
Does it mean I can suddenly shred  on the mandolin like he can? I wish!

Am I still excited enough that it happened that I immediately wanted to tell all my friends about it? Yup.

Liking that post cost him and his team literally nothing. Yet it added to my excitement about the show and about the artist overall.

Social media serves many roles, not least of which is customer service and community relations.

Think about yourself as a movie star. When you walk down the street, people are going to recognize you. You can’t stop and have lunch with every fan. You can’t even stop and take a picture with them all or you’d never get anywhere. But you can nod and smile to everyone who waves at you.

That’s what a “like” is on social media — it’s a head nod from a celebrity. It doesn’t suddenly make you best friends or ensure that they will buy your product/go see your next movie/buy your upcoming album. But it shows the fans that you are real, and that you respect them as people, not just as consumers. And it only takes as much time to create that connection as you need to give a single click of your mouse or tap on your phone.

If someone posts about you or your business online, respond. Or at the very least, smash that like button.

If they write you a review, thank them (or address any concerns as needed). But at the very least, like their post and let them know you see them and you appreciate them.

If you see a celebrity on the street, and you wave at them, you are going to tell your friends one of two stories:

“Oh my goodness, I just say this famous person on State Street. It was so cool!”

*** OR ***

“I just saw this famous person on State Street. He was kind of a jerk.”

​You’re the celebrity. Which would you prefer?

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 16 — Reply All Just (Accidentally) Reminded Us About The Power of Facebook Search

One of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, just did a whole episode trying to track down something that wasn’t showing up on Google. If they had remembered that Facebook, while first and foremost is a social media channel, is also a search engine, they could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and energy.

The Facebook search bar is more powerful than you probably realize. In this episode of Step Up Your Social we’ll walk through some of the power lurking right at your fingertips.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
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Drop us a line or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

Want to listen to the recreated version of the song? Or the original one? You can hear both in Reply All episode #158 The Case of the Missing Hit.

Or scroll down and listen to them both below.
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​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Full Episode Transcript

Do you listen to Reply All? It’s an awesome podcast about living in the age of the internet. Or something like that. If you don’t listen already, you should. It’s one of my favorites for sure.

Last week, they dropped an episode called “The Case Of The Missing Hit.” In it, PJ, one of their two hosts, goes on a truly epic search — and I mean epic in its literal meaning — to find a song that was big enough to be played on the radio internationally in the 90s, but somehow had [virtually] no presence on Google.

The story starts simply enough: A man named Tyler reached out to PJ for help. He could hear this song in his head, but he   couldn’t find it on Google, even though he remembered many of the lyrics. It’s a weird concept in today’s age, where we can find virtually anything online. And yet the song was nowhere to be found… with one weird exception. Years ago, a guy who lives in Trinidad and Tobago had asked about it in an online message board, referencing several of the same lyrics that Tyler remembered. But of course, he too, was trying to track down the song.

This proved that Tyler hadn’t made it up, but it also didn’t help PJ solve the case of the missing hit.

To solve the case, PJ did what any normal person with a budget and an obsession does: he helped Tyler recreate the song in its entirety from memory. Tyler took a song he hadn’t heard in more than 20 years and he coaxed it out of a group of session musicians. PJ then took that recording and talked to… well everyone!

He spoke with numerous music critics from Rolling Stone, producers, radio show hosts from the era, even the lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies, as the song in question had a very BNL type feel too it.

Google failed them, so PJ took his query to the world. And in the end, all this time, energy and effort amounted to… nothing. Everyone he spoke with had a great idea about how to try to solve the problem. Every great idea took PJ down another rabbit hole. And every rabbit hole ended as unceremoniously as it had started with, “sorry, I just don’t know.”

Then something the Trinidad and Tobago guy had said in his original post sparked something in PJ and he plugged a few lines of the song into Facebook’s search bar. Immediately, not only did he find the song… he found the songwriter who had written it in the first place.

So much time and energy and effort could have been avoided if PJ (or Tyler for that matter) had remembered that while Facebook is first and foremost a social media platform, like virtually every other social media platform you know and love, it’s also part-search engine.

So let’s talk about a few other things the Facebook search bar — that simple little bar right at the top of your account — can do, that you might not have realized:

First things first, type something — anything — into the bar on desktop, and you’ll be brought to a search page. From there, you have a slew of filtering options both on the top of the screen and on the lefthand side.

On the top of the screen, you can choose to only see posts, people, photos, videos, market place, pages, groups, apps, events and links. So the next time you’re trying to find a Facebook Page and you can’t quite remember what it’s called, instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, try filtering instead.

On the lefthand side of the screen, you have a whole other bunch of options. You can opt to see posts from anyone, or only yourself, your friends, your groups or pages, or only content shared publicly. You can even choose a source, to see if a friend, group or page has talked about an issue you care about.

Want to see all posts? Of course you can do that. But you can also limit your search to only posts you’ve already seen. Which could come in super handy if you’re looking for something you saw, but can’t remember where.

You can limit your search to only show content tagged in certain locations or posted in a certain year — or even in a certain month of a certain year!

So yeah, right off the bat, you can see that while Facebook might not be Google, there’s more to its search then simply keywords and scrolling.

Now let’s get into some of the less obvious things you can do with Facebook search:

Once upon a time there was an easy way to see which of your friends lived in which city. Then Facebook got rid of that helpful  feature. But good news, they replaced it (they just forgot to tell anyone). Looking for friends in a particular city or state? Just type in “my friends in [wherever]” and Facebook will show you a list.

Looking for a bar, a pizza place, or a spot to get your oil changed? Type in “pizza places near me” and Facebook will show you a list, with a map. Just like Yelp, but without ever leaving Facebook.

Want to know if your friends liked the pizza place you are considering? On the top menu bar, head over to places. On the lefthand side, select “visited by friends.” You can also filter by “open now” and  price!

Want to know which events your friends are going to (or should we say so-called friends, since they’re apparently going out without you!)? Type in a keyword. On the top menu, go to events. On the lefthand side menu, go to “popular with friends.” You can also search for events based on location and date, to find things to do today, tomorrow, this week, this weekend or next week.

While their Boolean search isn’t as powerful as Google, you can employ it to some degree. If you don’t know Boolean by name you might know it in practice. Boolean search is a method of search that lets you filter or exclude terms by using all caps AND, NOT and ORs. So type   “social media” AND “Madison, WI” into Facebook (or Google) and you’ll only get content back that mentions both. Switch AND with OR and you’ll find content mentioning either. Go with NOT and you’ll find content mentioning the first term but not the second one. This can be pretty helpful when trying to narrow your search.

Now it is worth mentioning that while Facebook search is powerful, it’s far less powerful than it used to be. Google “Facebook search bar tricks” and you’ll find tons of articles telling you about a bunch of features you can use. But alas, Facebook killed a lot of them off when they did away with their Graph Search. This feature let you see which of your friends liked which pages, and which posts had been liked by a specific person. Guess it was all just a bit too invasive for a company so worried about your privacy. #LOL

But there’s still plenty you can do with the Facebook search bar.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!

Drop us a line at stepupyoursocial.com or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

In the meantime, don’t get stuck like Tyler and PJ. Start appreciating the power of Facebook search today!

PS: want to hear the song PJ and Tyler recreated, as well as the original? I’ll have links to them both at stepupyoursocial.com.
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 So Much Better by Evan olson (Original Version)

​Better Than (Reply All Version)

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 10 — Facebook Wants You To Know What Your Competitors Are Doing… So Does Google

Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly?

Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature.

So let’s dig into Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.”

Afterward, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet, including mailing lists, other social channels and the almighty Google Alerts.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly? Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature. So let’s dig in to Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.” Afterwards, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet. But first up: Pages to Watch.

To access this great feature, go to your brand’s Facebook page. At the top, you will see a menu bar including the following  items: Page, Inbox, Notifications and then Insights. Click there. If you haven’t been to your insights yet, you are missing out on a ton of valuable information. We’ll do some more deep dives into Facebook Insights down the road. But for now, let’s just stick to this particular tool.

Once you’ve clicked Insights, you’ll be on the “overview” page. Scroll down to the bottom and you should see a section called “pages to watch.”

If you have never been there before, chances are Facebook has auto-populated the section with pages they think you might want to watch. If they guessed right, great. If not, simply hover over the number on the left and you can delete it from your list.

To add new pages, click the option to “add pages.”

Once you have your pages set up, you’ll see some very basic data: the name of the page, it’s total page Likes, the percent it grew from last week, how many times they posted this week and what their engagement this week has been. None of those data points are all that useful. BUT, if you click on the name of any of the pages, something interesting happens.

Facebook opens up a pop-up box and shows you that page’s top content from the past week. Top content in this case means that it had the highest combination of reach and engagement of anything that page posted this past week. And you can scroll down and see all of their content from the week, ordered by how popular it was for their audience.

Quite a feature, right?!

Bear in mind, when you follow a page, they have no way of knowing you are doing so. So if you want to know what is working for your competitors, without having to continuously go back to their page and scroll through their feed, you can just pop on over here every couple of days and easily keep tabs on them.

If you see that several of your competitors are sharing an article or a meme and it is resonating with their audiences… well don’t steal their content. But definitely do be inspired by it!

The content that is working for your competitors will probably also work for you. Follow along, learn, and create your own content accordingly.

And here’s the thing, while of course you should be watching your competitors, don’t limit yourself to them. Follow influencers in your field, relevant journalists or publications, even high value customers if you they are using brand pages.

Figure out who’s success you most want to track, and then spend a few minutes setting up your Facebook Pages to Watch. It will be an amazing tool you can use indefinitely moving forward.

While we’re on the topic of tracking your competitors, influencers, high-value customers and the like, let’s cover a few ways to do so outside of Facebook.

First of all, if the people you want to follow have public mailing lists, sign up! There’s no better way to know what they are excited about, then to see what they are sharing with the people they care about most. It probably goes without saying, but you might not want to use your company or organization’s branded email to sign up for a competitor’s email list. So use your gmail address, or create something new specifically for this purpose. While it might seem weird to be on their list, don’t forget, unless they are limiting sign-up (and this is important: don’t lie in any way to get on their list!) they know that their list is public. And chances are, if you have an   email, they’re on it! As far as influencers and relevant journalists go, you can use your branded email or not. Your call.

In episode two of this podcast, we covered the power and the importance of twitter lists. Twitter lists are a great way to follow relevant accounts. And you can use private lists to do so under-the-radar, even if your brand isn’t using Twitter as an outreach and communications tool. Go back and listen to that episode for more.

There are also plenty of third party tools out there that will track keyword mentions and send you alerts when those keywords pop up online. Some are free, most are not. But one powerful one that is free is google alerts. If you haven’t set up google alerts yet, you should do so immediately.

To do so go to google.com/alerts. Once there you can put in some relevant keywords and let google know that you want to receive email alerts whenever those words are used online. It’s important to know that google alerts don’t track content from social media platforms, so don’t expect to see Facebook or Twitter mentions on there.

But if someone mentions you or your brand in a blog post, or on their website, Google will usually catch it and send you an alert.

And here’s the thing, you can select if you want google to send you an alert as a mention happens, or to instead send you a daily or weekly digest of all mentions. For your brand, you should get those alerts as they happen. Unless people are talking about your brand numerous times a day, you want to know you’ve been mentioned as soon as possible. But if you also want to use them to track competitors, industry keywords, influencers and the like, you might not need them rolling in as they happen and you can opt to receive those alerts as part of a daily or even weekly round-up. The choice is yours.

One other cool thing you can do with google alerts is set them up for high value clients so that if that client gets an award or someone writes a story about them, you can be amongst the first to reach out and congratulate them. Alternately, you can let them know if you find something problematic that they might want to deal with

The tools are out there for you to keep tabs on the internet. The set up is relatively simple and the rewards can be immense.

So I’ll finish this episode with the same question I started it with: Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well? Turns out, you do! You just have to take a moment and set it up.

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 7 — Beware Engagement Bait… You Could Be Limiting Your Reach on Facebook

SUYS Engagement Bait PodcastStep Up Your Social Ep. 7

There are 5 keywords that, when used in a post on Facebook, automatically limit your post’s reach. Facebook has labeled the tactic in question as “Engagement Bait.”

While Engagement Bait first started being penalized in the Facebook algorithm over a year ago, Facebook just recently began applying their penalties to video content, as well as to text.​

In this episode, we cover the what, the why and the how of Engagement Bait, as well as some tips for avoiding it.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Here in Madison, there’s a music venue that used to run this really clever ongoing campaign — they would give away a free pair of tickets to an upcoming concert. To enter, all you had to do was tag the person you would bring with you in the comments if you won. Then they randomly selected one lucky responder to nab a free pair of tickets to the show.

But really, the biggest winner in this contest was the venue.

The contest cost them 2 concert tickets, but hundreds of people were identifying and promoting the shows directly to their friends. And not just any friends, but the friends they most thought would want to go to the show. So while two people got to go for free, hundreds of potential fans were being tagged by friends and notified that a show they might be excited about was right around the corner.

And not only that, the Facebook algorithm would have been going nuts seeing all of this organic engagement the venue’s page was generating. Every time someone tagged a friend, they were micro-targeting one person, but also telling Facebook that this content was hot and they should show it to lots more people. As far as the venue was concerned, this was a win/win.

And all it cost them was a pair of concert tickets!

I used to see this tactic employed on my Facebook feed all the time. You probably did too. And then one day, it just stopped.

That’s because in late 2017, Facebook labeled this type of content as “engagement bait.” And they started penalizing it in the algorithm.

Because Facebook can’t actually know your intention when you share a post, they defined engagement bait pretty broadly as simply any post that mentions one of the 5 following words:

  • Like
  • Vote
  • Comment
  • Tag
  • Share

It didn’t matter the context, using one of these words simply caused Facebook to devalue your content in the algorithm. Meaning they literally showed your post to fewer people.

As a marketer, this might be annoying. As a user though, you can probably understand why they did this.

While I loved that the concert venue was giving away tickets (I even won a pair once!) the tactic of asking people to tag their friends can get get to be pretty spammy. Like this post if your an Aries doesn’t do much to create meaningful conversations or connections online.

When Facebook first announced the new rules around Engagement Bait, they only applied to the text in your post. Then they updated it to also apply to text in the comments (as lots of clever marketers would simply make their engagement request in the first comment rather than in the post itself).

And now, Facebook has finally made the final jump — they will also demote content that uses engagement bait words (like, vote comment, tag and share) within the audio of a video.

While this might seem frustrating, just remember, it is genuinely in Facebook’s interest that you enjoy the content you, and everyone else, sees in their feed. If not, you, and everyone else, will stop logging in. And then there will be no one to market too anyway!

You can still encourage engagement, you just can’t do so using 5 key words. Don’t ask people to “respond in the comments.” Just ask your question. Your users know how to respond. And don’t ask for the like — create content they will like without being prodded.

Of course you can ignore these rules all you want. But Facebook ultimately decides how many people will see your posts. So ignoring their rules means limiting your own reach. The choice is clear as far as I’m concerned.

Engagement is great! Engagement bait — not so much.

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 6 — Stop Inviting Everyone You Know To Like Your Facebook Page

You start a new Facebook brand page. It’s only natural to invite everyone you know to like the page.

The problem is, you’re actually hurting your page’s future growth when you invite people who like you — but don’t care about your brand — to like your Facebook brand page.

​In this episode:
• We dive into the Facebook algorithm
• Talk about the difference between “good” and “bad” likes
• Cover helpful tips to grow your page with the right audience
• The importance of using a brand page for your page (as opposed to a personal account)
• And a whole lot more

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 4 – The Power of Microtargeting with Facebook Ads

If you run ads on Facebook without first building quality audiences, it’s like you’re standing in the street, throwing expensive flyers in the air, and hoping for the best.

Facebook offers you the opportunity to microtarget based on tons of different factors.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of microtargeting.

We will also cover the three different Facebook advertising audience types:
• Custom
• Lookalike and
• Saved

​We’ll cover what they are, how to build them, and why you should be using them to run ads on Facebook.

If you enjoy this this podcast, please consider reviewing it on iTunes. Thanks for tuning in!

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 3 – A Deep Dive Into Stories

“Stories” are the Facebook response to Snapchat — fun, quirky bits of content that disappear after 24 hours.

Throughout the Facebook Universe — WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, people are currently sharing over a billion stories every day!

Instagram Stories alone has over 400 million daily active users — more than twice as many as Snapchat.

Stories have all kinds of fun and interesting capabilities built directly into the platform.

In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we cover the what, the when and the how of Stories along with a bunch of tips, tricks and fun things you should try.

Listen today and let us know if you have any questions, or anything to add to the conversation around this fun topic!

STEP UP YOUR INSTAGRAM!

Ready to become an Instagram Champion? I provide private lessons to businesses, campaigns, nonprofits, solopreneurs, bands… anyone who wants to get more out of this powerful platform.

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The Power of Facebook Notes

Update: As of October 2020, Facebook has done away with Facebook Notes.

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Facebook Notes

Getting Started With Facebook Notes
Ever wanted to spice up your Facebook post, but didn’t know how?
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With a Facebook Note, you can add a cover photo, as well as pictures and GIFs throughout your posts.You can also format your text with bold and italics, bullet and numbered lists, hyperlinks and much more.So instead of just another boring picture, your post can look like this:

Facebook Notes

Facebook Notes

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​LOOKING FOR MORE SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS, TRICKS, STRATEGIES AND HACKS?

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Check out my podcast Step Up Your Social. All episodes are short (~10 minutes or less) and provide quick, actionable tips to take your digital marketing to the next level. Listen at StepUpYourSocial.com or wherever you stream podcasts.

 

 

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Facebook’s Saved Folder

 

Did you know that Facebook lets you save things you want to come back to later?

Ever see an ad you were interested in, but didn’t have time to dig in? Maybe it was a post from your favorite digital storyteller and strategist, walking you through some awesome Facebook feature you definitely want to learn about, just not at this moment 😉. Perhaps it’s a picture of your baby nephew, who’s just too cute for words and you don’t want to lose track of all those awesome pictures of him in his adorable little onesies.

Facebook has you covered.

Anytime you see anything on Facebook — ANYTHING! — you can “save” it, offering you easy access to it whenever you want to go back to it in the future.

Go to any post on Facebook and click the three dotes in the top right hand corner.

Facebook Saved Folder

You’ll get a dropdown menu. The very first option will offer you what looks like a ribbon icon and the option to “Save post.”

Facebook Save Post

Click it and that post/video/ad will immediately be added to your Saved Folder

HOW DO I FIND MY SAVED FOLDER? ​

This too is extremely easy. Go to your homepage and look at the tabs on the lefthand side of the screen. Under “Explore,” you’ll find your “Saved” folder.

Facebook Explore Tabs

You’ll also find a bunch of other cool things.

For example: You know those “On This Day” posts Facebook shows you, reminding you about that time you became friends with that person you don’t even know 8 years ago? Well sometimes there are days or people we might prefer not to remember (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind anyone?). Click “On This Day” and then go to “Preferences” in the top right corner. You can choose people or dates to be excluded from those otherwise fun and helpful Facebook reminders!

OKAY, SO BACK TO YOUR FACEBOOK SAVED FOLDER

Click where it says “Saved” and anything you saved will be there waiting for you.

You can even search within your saved items!

Facebook Search your saved items

Once you’ve saved a few items, you can then build collections, to make it even easier to navigate your favorite material. ​

Facebook Saved Collections

So you might have Saved Facebook folders for digital tips, family pics, funny videos, recipes, articles to read later… the options are endless!​

I’d love to hear from you about how you think you might use this feature. Share them in the comments or connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

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