As we talked about earlier this week, there’s been a lot of talk lately in marketing spheres about “Sponsored” and “Promoted” stories on Facebook. What are they? How are they different? Do they work together? These are all valid questions being asked and researched. Being that we talked earlier about what “Sponsored Stories” are, let’s take a deeper look at “Promoted Stories”.
Promoted stories were created for Brand Page owners to pay to extend their audience. As we’ve discussed in the past, only about 15% of your fans end up seeing the content you post. With Promoted stories, you can pay to guarantee that a much larger fan base sees the post, along with friends of people who interact with the promoted post. These posts show directly into the newsfeed, and are hard to miss.
Overall, research has shown that promoted stories outperforms sponsored stories (except in the category of campaign reach). Regardless, the results when the two are used together are the most exciting. By using promoted and sponsored stories together, you can see a tremendous amount of user engagement, from an audience you never have reached before. This can be extremely beneficial when promoting sales or services.
Need an example of how to go about doing this? Well, If you have a blog (which is a great way to gain SEO) then a great idea is to promote your blogs by publishing the article in an open graph format. Create a sponsored and promoted story post with a properly formatted picture and the first sentence of the blog post. Submit the post, and be ready to be astounded by the amount of new viewers.
For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, Founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. With a long-history of counseling local businesses about their marketing efforts, Marentis provides insight on what it takes for small businesses to succeed and thrive in today’s evolving digital environment. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL’s Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies, Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 technology platforms. Marentis is a frequent speaker at local digital marketing conferences and a contributor to SMB and technology-focused publications.
