New opportunities for promotion on Facebook that you did not know about
On May 30, 2019, he published the first article of the series about the group “Do not create groups on Facebook” , where he showed on an example that it makes no sense to create a group for personal promotion, this does not work. He introduced two terms: group clustering and audience dying. He showed two fairly well-known groups (Websarafan and Your Arena), how they developed and what they came to.
The article caused heated discussion. I made some additions and as a result I got a cycle of three articles. Already in the process of writing, disseminating and discussing, I came across some unfamiliar features of Facebook. I recorded the findings, studied, and as a result, I got a draft for a new article. I believe that what I will tell you is unknown to most users.
Initially drew the attention of the audience in the core community.
Post-question on the topic
Typical "authoritative" answer
The reaction was funny: no one understood anything. Some suspected me of amateurism. At this moment, I realized that most people from the relevant community are simply not in the subject. And went to the English-language Internet in search of information. But even there disappointment awaited: almost no information on the issue of interest. Therefore, here is a description and thoughts on some of the features of Facebook that you most likely did not know about.
New Facebook features you may not have known about
If you make a post on behalf of a business page in any group, then in the Pages Manager mobile application you can see the full analytics of the post:
Example of a post in the group
Detailed analytics of a single post
We see the coverage, the number of reactions, clicks, click-throughs.
Another button Lift post. Allows any post in the group to be advertised.
This is how you can start advertising.
We get a post to be raised on behalf of a business page. I did not find any special conditions for placement - for example, targeting group members - but maybe I was looking badly.
Accordingly, when we make a successful post in a group and collect a lot of likes, then everyone who responded to the publication can be invited to like the business page on whose behalf the post was made. After that, you can advertise the post (raise the publication), attract interactions and likes. This is a well-known functionality, but in the context of analytics and advertising of exactly the post in the group, we get new opportunities.
Analytics works only in a mobile application. There is no special section in Business Page Statistics, you can only see it in the Notifications section of the Pages Manager application if you go to the target post in the group. Personally, I discovered by accident.
The Notifications section in the Pages Manager application
I also accidentally found one group where post views from a business page are also shown on the desktop:
An example of the coverage indicator when viewed through the desktop.
The word Saw and number appears next to Share and likes. It is interesting that already in the process of writing the article this figure disappeared and I miraculously preserved the screen.
Another point. If you make a post with a link to another post or note, i.e. if the link leads to other content inside Facebook, then analytics is not shown.
An example of a post with a link to another post on Facebook - there are no indicators
In the case of notes, this does not play a special role, inside the note there are still numbers with impressions and views:
If you make a link to the note, there are also no indicators ...
All indicators of the note on the page author
There is a read rate inside the note
Personally, it seemed to me that the relevance of Instant Articles is growing: now you can get organic traffic from groups and monetize.
My hypothesis: we are on the verge of new strategies for personal advancement
Now each post from the business page in the group receives detailed statistics. I personally made a table with an analysis of the announcements of articles in groups. A rather interesting picture was drawn in terms of coverage. I immediately saw the potential for each group and ... the number ceased to play a role. Only the active part of the audience matters, which is indirectly displayed by the number of views. A group of 12 thousand and 2 thousand may be at the same level in terms of coverage.
Example of a table for analyzing posts in groups
In my table with an analysis of publications in groups, the number did not even become a factor. Only involvement and potential in the form of coverage.
The analytics of the business page posts in groups is visible only through the mobile application, but there was a group where the Views indicator was on the desktop. I found only one such. I suspect that the technology itself is only being tested. Check with yourself, maybe you will find something interesting. It's hard for me to believe that I'm the only one who saw this.
What is interesting is what we get in the statistics of a business page: posts in groups are not taken into account, they do not appear anywhere, but general statistics clearly summarize the data from these posts. Otherwise, the math does not converge.
The total coverage of the content of a business page includes posts in groups.
The total coverage of posts on a page does not correspond to the total coverage
Perhaps in the future there will be analytics for posts in groups. Hope so. One more factor speaks in favor of the fact that business pages get opportunities for promotion in groups: you can activate the service of pending posts within a group.
Group settings. App add-ons.
Just the other day, I tested the Hootsuite connection. Everything works, you can do posts through the scheduler. Create a month-ahead content plan for publishing on behalf of a business page in a group.
Testing a publication in a group through the publication planning service
Admin, skip it!
In the article “How the group works: the forest around the mountain” raised the topic of self-PR as the main driving force for the development of the expert environment within the group. In any human grouping there are individuals - Persons - who stand out, strive to emphasize their brightness. When applied to Facebook groups, these Persons engage in personal self-promotion. If their activity is belittled, artificially limited, this leads to the degradation of the information space. I have already given an example of Websarafan:
An example of a post in Websarafan: sexism, stupidity and flood.
In order for the group to develop, evolve, on the contrary, it is necessary to maintain self-PR, to maintain the spirit of healthy intelligent competition. This motivates experts to publish quality content, share research, discuss and improve professionalism.
But with the content, especially the expert one, there is a problem: long and expensive. It’s difficult to do one person, hiring a team is not very cost-effective. The cost of creating one article for 10 thousand knowledge (approximately like the one you are reading) starts from 8000 rubles. Not the fact that it will ever bring direct material benefits. In conditions when only self-employed single specialists participate in the group, when the possibilities for system marketing by companies are limited, it makes little sense to invest resources in content and distribution.
But everything is changing. Now every company, web studio or technical service can build a network for distributing content in groups. In other people's groups. You just need to join the groups on behalf of the business page, publish content, track performance. This gives new opportunities for promotion on Facebook, motivation and the sense of investing resources in the creation of content - longreads and webinars.
As a result, everything is won: participants receive high-quality articles and video broadcasts, the development of the information space, the growth of the active part of the audience. Organization, content producer gets opportunities for content marketing, personal PR. The administration of the group acts as the primary censor, editor and wraps up frank trash and non-core content. For this interaction, one little thing is needed: the opportunity for a business page to become a member of the community. In the group settings, you can enable or disable pages from joining the group. One breaker separates the group and specialists from new opportunities.
Checkbox-permission to the pages to make a request for joining the group
I will give an example. Here is my table analyzing publications in two groups.
Two groups with different posting conditions
The first group is large (12 thousand participants), but few reactions. While publishing on behalf of a personal page (profile), it seemed to me that the group was frankly dead. But as soon as I made the publication on behalf of the business page, I immediately saw the reach. Zero reactions, but there is potential. We need to work on the announcement and topic that will attract the audience of this particular group.
The second group is smaller in number (2 thousand participants), but gives more involvement. There is a target audience, there are likes and comments, there are contacts with the moderator, but ... There is no coverage figure. And that is the problem. The marketer inside of me is struggling between emotions and facts.
Choosing between two groups, what to choose: where is the analytics and there is a forecast, or a group with a high involvement of the previous post? Being a sane marketer I choose a higher a priori probability. Likes can come or not, it depends on a combination of factors, including luck, but coverage, the size of the active part of the audience is a constant, a constant indicator, predictable, with potential use.
But things can change when I see coverage in the second group: although the group is smaller, the size of the active audience may be comparable or larger than in the first. You only need to allow my business page to join the group.
Conclusion
I’m actually wondering if I only saw new opportunities for promoting business pages in groups? Write in the comments if you have post analytics, what do you see in your Pages Manager application?
Facebook changed the rules of the game, complicated it somewhere, somewhere it gave new opportunities. But he changed, not killed. The rules are more complicated, but the game is still the same. It seems to me that we are on the verge of new horizons, I think in 1-2 years the strategy of page promotion will change dramatically and a new breath will appear. Personally, I vote for it. I would like to add about the future capabilities of the Messenger and a single protocol for transferring data between Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, about the future cryptocurrency as a means of payment inside Facebook - all this is really looking forward, it seems to me that it will bring something very interesting in terms of promotion. In the meantime, follow hidden updates and share insiders.