Moving forward, Facebook pages touting more than 400 likes now have another advertising option under their aegis in the form of the promote button the social network announced in test form in late April, as its rollout was confirmed on the Facebook Marketing page Wednesday.
Unfortunately, describing the facts the company said, “The Promoted Posts feature (available only to Page administrators) is a newest way to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to promote their content on Facebook,” the company informed Time magazine.
While it sounds like it could be a useful tool, but its discreet introduction produced more questions than it provided answers. The company further noted: -- Page administrators will be able to promote posts via a new button on the Page composer. Promoting a post will create a sponsored story or ad that enables the post to reach more of the Page's fans. We want to make it as simple as possible for businesses to reach fans and their friends through their Page.
And perhaps finally getting sensing the fact that this tool, while potentially useful, is not exactly as intuitive as Facebook may have expected, the company circulated a Promote Your Page Posts guide to educate page administrators on how to use the new feature.
According to the Facebook guide, after entering the details of the post, page administrators of pages with more than 400 likes can click the promote button and set their desired budget, for the lifetime of the post (not a daily budget), and the social network will generate an estimated reach at that budget figure. Once page admins determine a suitable budget, hitting the save button will launch the promoted posts.
Most revealing about this explanation is that whenever someone who follows your Page likes, comments, or shares your promoted post, all of that person's friends will see that promoted post as well. Thus, all types of posts from pages can be promoted, including status updates, photos, offers, videos, and questions. And the same steps can be followed for any posts created by the page over the past three days.
According to Beth McCabe, vice president of social marketing and technology at Digitas, said the new feature is mainly a step to make advertising easier on Facebook. “Promoted Posts will likely appeal to small brands, allowing them to reach a larger audience and drive more awareness around the products and/or services they are looking to promote on the platform,” she said.
The guide further added:
The posts appear directly within desktop and mobile news feeds rather than in the right column where ads usually appear. When you promote a post, it will be shown in the news feeds of more of the people who like your page than you would reach normally. Also, Promoted posts are marked as “Sponsored” in the feed and go to friends of people who interact with the units as well as brand fans.
In fact, news feed is a hot-spot for people to see the most recent and popular content from the people and pages they are connected to. To make sure news feed is filled with the most relevant stories, you can only promote posts within three days from when they created.
Moreover, users of different languages can enjoy this latest feature as promoted posts can also be targeted by language or location by clicking on the public button at the time of creating the post and adjusting the options as the page admin sees fit.
Finally, promotions can be stopped and resumed simply by clicking on the “promoted for $x” button in the bottom-right-hand corner of the post, and then clicking on the gear menu in the bottom-left-hand corner and selecting “stop promotion” or “resume promotion.” The post's budget can be adjusted by following the first step and then clicking on the pencil icon next to “budget.”