Episode 34: Facebook Family Ads, Fighting the Algorithm, and Building Content

Author: Lori Highby

 

Join your hosts Matt, Min and Rai this week as they discuss new targeting strategies by Facebook, how to overcome the Facebook news feed algorithm so that your ads are seen, and how to build an efficient and effective content calendar for your social media. Catch the Digital Natives every Monday for the latest in tech, marketing, and design!

 

Facebook Family Ads [7:55]
Fighting the Algorithm [13:45]
Building Content [19:25]

 

Facebook Family Ads

Facebook ads already seem targeted (and creepy) enough to most people. New Facebook ad targeting now allows for the targeting of entire households as opposed to just individuals.  Min gives us the scoop on this new feature and what this may look like when fully implemented.

 “Families travel together, so people can now send ads to families and try to influence an entire family into wanting to go to a location.” -Min
“Around the holiday season, they’re going to send parents ads for kids’ toys that their children might like based on their kids likes, which is creepy.” -Min
“Some products, like the Sonos, you only need one in a household, so if one person buys that through an ad, the entire family will no longer see that ad.” -Min
“You’re now getting the nagging from an outside source and from your kids at the same time.” -Rai

 

Fighting the Algorithm

We’ve all heard that your Facebook posts are only seen by a small minority of your friends/followers. Rai gives us a refresher on the Facebook ad algorithm and has a few tips on how to make sure that your content is seen by the people that matter!

 “As a lot of you probably know, it was in my newsfeed this morning, that Facebook reached 2 billion active users on Tuesday.” -Rai
“it’s really hard for advertisers to figure out what those data points are and make sure that they are hitting those so that people are actually seeing their ads.” -Rai
“Users consume live video three times as much as uploaded video.” -Rai
“No other content gets out as well past the algorithm as live video.” -Matt
“What they suggest is to start on Twitter, see what does well on there, and then transfer the message to Facebook.” -Rai

 

Building Content

Creating a social media content calendar can be a daunting task for even the most seasoned social media marketer. Between planning types of posts, creating content, and scheduling, there is a lot of work that goes into them. Matt shares five useful tips that make creating a content calendar a breeze!

 “You’re planning out a whole year of content sometimes. It’s tough to plan that much at one time.” -Matt
“What you’re thinking will be a great topic in December right now could be completely different when you actually get to December.” -Matt
“Play around with it. When the carousel images on Instagram came out, we were playing with it that day. When the Snapchat map came out, I was playing around with it the second I got the update.” -Matt
“What you’re interested in for writing on topics may not be what your audience is interested in.” -Matt
“You may be creating one big piece of content, but there may be many smaller pieces of content you can take form there.” -Matt