Editorial Articles

Facebook is never far from the headlines and as one of the world’s fastest evolving social networks it’s busy making plenty of its own, releasing announcements about changes and updates to its advertising platform on a near weekly basis. Some are game changing, others less so, but many have the capacity to send your campaign wildly off track if ignored.

Facebook is still young compared to tried and tested ad channels like search and banners, so constant evolution is to be expected. Understanding all its capabilities and sophisticated nuances is undoubtedly a complex art and with that in mind, any marketer serious about exploiting Facebook’s myriad of targeted advertising opportunities needs to sit up and take note.

To demonstrate, earlier this year the declaration that Facebook was testing real-time ad targeting made waves across our industry. The mining of actual conversations as they happened to serve targeted subject-specific ads in the moment was at once astonishing, exciting and unnerving: mention to your pals that you fancy a pizza for dinner – instantly receive a money-off voucher for Domino’s or Pizza Hut. At this point more than a few marketers would have dropped everything to rewrite their social media strategy, shift their assets and reshape their budgets.

So how do you keep up to date with all these developments to ensure your campaign is still working effectively? How do you assess when to undertake a complete strategy overhaul, or simply have a catch-up meeting with your social media manager?

Recent updates in Facebook
It’s worthwhile keeping on top of the frequent updates from Facebook. Here are a few recent innovations to the system:

• Timeline redefines the profile concept, helping users to build a representation of their life story on Facebook. With Timeline, users can share what matters most to them on different levels of magnitude, highlighting major milestones such as birthdays or new jobs, as well as everyday activity.
• New Open Graph enhancements allow consumers to synch Facebook with other applications and share what they are ‘reading’ or what they are ‘listening’ to, increasing the number of behaviours for advertising to target against.
• Advertisers will be able to deliver sponsored stories against these actions and even carve up segments for more precision. For example, they can promote to all ‘listens’ from the band Coldplay.
• The new sponsored stories will be generated from applications, but advertisers don’t need to own the app where the action takes place to target against the behaviour.
• Facebook also updated the News Feed, changing how stories are presented to users. Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm will play a major role in determining whether brand updates are seen, but sponsored stories can increase the likelihood of a brand message reaching a mass audience.

Stay in touch with your agency

• Keeping abreast of everything Facebook related is a full-time job, so any agency worth its salt will employ at least one specialist to monitor and stay on top of all such news and developments.
• Keep in regular contact and request periodic updates so you are better informed. Frequent communication and information sharing will lead to enhanced knowledge so that when the time comes for Facebook to make another significant announcement you’ll be braced for it, and better placed to adapt and move forward without breaking your stride.
• Stay in close contact with the people running your social campaigns on a day-to-day basis and ask if there's anything new that might affect your campaigns or strategy. Request bi-weekly or monthly email updates. While not every detail is life changing, it's good to stay in the loop.

Consider a vendor partner

• There are a small number of vendors who are true Facebook insiders, with access to cutting edge innovations and data that others just don’t have. This group is called Facebook Ads API Tool Vendors and Facebook’s ad team makes a concerted effort to release updates to its Ads API Tool Vendors first. This gives them the clear advantage of being able to integrate new advertising capabilities and educate the market before the story leaks down through the press or becomes available in the generic Facebook advertising marketplace. For a list of businesses that have access to Facebook’s Ads API, click here - if you want the very latest in Facebook expertise they should be your first port of call.

Do your homework

• Even if you're in regular discussions with your agency about potential platform changes, it’s a good idea to proactively keep up-to-date on Facebook. You’ll find that there are plenty of news outlets providing updates and analysis of the latest Facebook marketing tools on a daily basis.
• A great resource for anyone running an application within the social network is Facebook’s own Developers' Wiki. It covers a lot, from getting started on website integration and accessing users’ social graphs through mobile apps, to advanced topics such as credits API but be warned, it's very tech-specific and might be too advanced for the average brand marketer.
• There are also blogs you can follow that specialise solely in Facebook minutiae. Ad Age is a good one while Inside Facebook covers the platform from the developer and advertiser’s perspective. All Facebook is another useful resource full of marketing news and has the low-down on the main protagonists involved in Facebook marketing, complete with tutorials. For breaking news and analysis on the latest happenings in Facebook and all other social media, take a look at Mashable.

Testing is best

• At this point you’ll have a handle on how and why Facebook constantly updates its advertising capabilities, so the next logical step is to build a change contingency into your strategy. It’s all very well being theoretically up to speed on the latest Facebook updates, but the only way to truly understand what makes sense and what works best for your campaign is to test it.
• Don’t be fooled into thinking you need to utilise every new feature to run a successful campaign. Instead, test and study the results from each one as they appear and only then apply them. That's basic marketing strategy and shouldn't be forgotten.
• The targeting of specific tabs or the phenomenal real-time capabilities described earlier might sound flash, but may not actually give your campaign any sort of tangible boost. You might find you have more success targeting certain interest segments and demographics that are totally outside the box. Thinking along these parallel lines, we’ve seen some surprising correlations between people who buy specific products and the other interests they share.
• One final thing to remember as you strategise about what works for your brand and what doesn’t - don’t underestimate the value of good old trial and error.

Dave Williams
CEO & Co-Founder, BLiNQ Media