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How To Use Facebook Pixel Reporting To Identify Who Is Secretly Using Fetch And Render In GSC On Your Site

August 3, 2017 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

I can see you, and now you can see me. :)

A few months ago, Dan Sharp from Screaming Frog wrote a killer post about how to use fetch and render in Google Search Console (GSC) on almost any site. Fetch and render in GSC enables you see how Googlebot is rendering any page on your site (since it fetches all necessary resources to render the page at hand, including JavaScript, CSS, images, etc.) It enables you to detect differences in how Googlebot is viewing your page versus the average user.

It’s an awesome tool and can help identify blocked resources, trouble with rendering content, etc. If you want to learn more about what you can find using fetch and render, you can check out my Search Engine Land column titled Fetch and Horror.

Dan’s global fetch and render approach was to iframe urls from another unverified website on your own domain and then use fetch and render in GSC. It works, and pretty darn well. I’ve set this up and tested it myself, and it does indeed work.

For example, here’s a third party fetch of the Big Green Egg homepage (one of my favorite grills btw):

That’s cool, but let’s face it, rendering a site that you don’t own and control does give you a creepy feeling. You aren’t really authorized to use fetch and render in GSC on any site other than your own verified site(s). So rendering another person’s site is like virtually trying on their clothes from the comfort of your own home. Yes, that sounds creepy and it’s a good analogy. You are basically “fetching around”. You might feel like this:

And for those on the opposite end (being fetched), they can feel violated when someone is fetching and rendering their urls in order to see if there are any render problems. Again, it’s all a bit creepy.

But Are You Really Invisible?… No, Everything Is Trackable
As I was testing this out via my own setup, I started wondering how easily sites being rendered without consent could tell a third party was doing this. And if they could check that easily, it could lead to some uncomfortable situations. Which leads me to my next point…

Facebook Pixel Insights, With A Twist.
I was recently checking out Facebook’s pixel reporting and noticed an interesting finding. If you’re not familiar with the Facebook pixel, it enables you to cookie any visitor to your site and then retarget them back on Facebook. It’s a powerful approach that I’ve written about several times before (especially for boosting content to various custom audiences).

As I was reviewing the pixel reporting in Facebook Business Manager, I checked the domains tab. And clicking that tab just might blow your fetch-and-rendered mind. It will show you any domain where your pixel has fired. And I mean any domain.

In theory, most sites should only see their own domain listed… so if you see others listed, then something funny could be going on (like another site scraping your pages). And of course, this would show any site that is iframing your content. And that’s exactly what you need to do in order to fetch and render another site’s urls. Do you see where this is leading?

How To Access Pixel Reporting in Facebook Business Manager
In order to view your Facebook pixel reporting, first access Facebook Business Manager. Once you do, click the hamburger menu in the upper left corner. You’ll see several options in the menu, including Pixels. Click that link in the menu and you’ll be taken to a screen that shows all of your “pixel fires”.

Once you are viewing your pixel reporting, you’ll see four tabs, including Events, URLs, Domains, and Devices. The Domains tab is the one you should check out.

When checking the list of domains in my reporting, I noticed the test domain I was using to set up global fetch and render using Dan’s approach.

Here’s what I saw:

So my own domain is listed, which is correct, but there are several others there that shouldn’t be. And one is the domain I’m using for global fetch and render. Uh oh, I caught myself. :)

Beware, Your Digital Camouflage Isn’t Perfect:
OK, this means any site using the Facebook pixel could easily see that you have been fetch and rendering their urls. Cue creepy music. Remember, everything is trackable on the web (ok, almost anything). So, before you fire up your new global fetch and render setup, just know that websites have an easy way to identify who is fetching around. And by the way, who would think that Facebook would be the one helping SEOs uncover this? Ironic, don’t you think? :)

Big Recommendation: Set up FB’s tracking pixel (for more than this reason!)
When Dan’s global fetch and render approach was published, many were thrilled to try it out (myself included). But there were some concerns about who might be fetching your own site. Now with the Facebook pixel reporting, you can easily check the domains where your pixel is firing. And if any of those domains aren’t your own, then they just might be “fetching around”.

So definitely set up the Facebook pixel, and for more than just this reason. Boosting content to custom audiences is an amazing way to help get your content in front of a very targeted audience. And now that you can see who is rendering your own content, there’s yet another benefit to installing the Facebook pixel. So do it today. It should only take you a few minutes to set up.

In closing, fetch and render is powerful, but be careful if you’re “fetching around”. Facebook apparently has the back of site owners, and those site owners just might see you poking around. See what I did there? :)

How To Save Social Shares In WordPress When Changing Domain Names, Moving To HTTPS, or Switching Permalinks (Using Social Warfare)

August 30, 2016 By Glenn Gabe 2 Comments

It’s no secret that changing urls can be dangerous SEO-wise. In the past, I’ve written heavily about the dangers of website redesigns, migrating to a new CMS, and changing domain names. Basically, whenever you mass change urls on your site, you can run into serious SEO problems. And that includes migrating to https (which many sites are doing now).

For example, there are a number of things you need to do in order to maintain search equity during the change. That includes nailing the redirection plan, properly changing canonicals, handling the site move correctly in GSC, updating your CMS settings, and more. And the redirection plan is a critically important step that enables you to pass all signals from the old urls to the new ones (on a one-to-one basis). If you don’t, you can pay dearly.

But while many people focus on the SEO aspects of changing urls (for good reason), there’s another issue that often gets overlooked. And it can also have a big impact on your business. It’s the dreaded loss of social shares.

URL Changes Are Inevitable
Every website needs to be redesigned at some point, and now many are switching to https. So, changing urls is inevitable for many business owners.

And if you have spent a lot of time publishing killer content that has built many social shares across posts, then the last thing you want to see is a major loss of shares. Social proof can be powerful, and watching a post go from 1,546 shares to 0 is enough to make even the toughest digital marketer cringe in horror.

So, we’ve got a tough situation. On the one hand, you want to improve your site, migrate to https, etc. And on the other hand, you can potentially lose all of your social shares in one fell swoop. And the social networks aren’t helping matters. Try and find solid documentation from them about retaining shares when you change urls. There’s really no strong documentation that covers the situation, which is unfortunate.

By the way, the major social networks should follow Google’s lead support-wise. Google provides an outstanding site move section in their webmaster support area. I wish Facebook, LinkedIn, and others would do the same, but that’s for another post.

Therefore, I guess we’re all in a tough situation when changing urls, right? Goodbye to those precious social shares… Woe is me…

BUT HOLD ON!

Drop the pity routine! You don’t need to settle for disappearing social shares. You don’t need to watch social proof disappear into thin air. I found an excellent solution to the problem and I’m going to share it below (and walk you through how to use it). Enter Social Warfare, your social proof savior. I think you’ll like it. <- You see what I did there? :)

Social Warfare To The Rescue With “Share Recovery”
I started using social warfare a while ago for displaying social shares on my blog and it’s a great plugin with a boatload of functionality. But, it ends up they added even more functionality that is mind-blowing, especially for someone like myself who helps a lot of companies with website redesigns. They added “Share Recovery”.

As you can guess, the smart people at Social Warfare developed a solution based on a global need. And you might actually build a statue for them after using it (as you stare at your glorious social shares from your old urls, combined with shares from your new ones). Based on my experience, it’s been a great solution.

Once you install and set up the plugin, Social Warfare will check both the old url and the new url for shares, and then combine the results. So you will have both the old shares and new shares (including any brand new shares you build over time), all wrapped into one. Awesome, right?

Several options available in the UI, plus an important hack:
I’m sure you’re wondering which types of situations are handled by the plugin? Well, most url changes are covered by Social Warfare. For example, the plugin covers:

changing permalink structure
migrating to https from http
switching from non-www to www (or vice versa)
switching to a subdomain, and of course,
changing domain names overall

Here is a screenshot of the options in the UI:

The UI in WordPress handles most of what’s listed above, but switching domain names is a little trickier (yet still relatively easy to implement). You’ll need to add a small section of code to your theme’s functions.php file instead of using the UI. I’ll cover that scenario below.

How To Save Social Shares When Changing Domain Names
Below, I’ll cover step-by-step how to retain social shares when changing your domain name. Again, you can handle several url changes using Social Warfare, but I’ll focus on switching domain names for this example. I’ll use domain1.com and domain2.com to keep this simple. Also, you obviously need to be running WordPress so you can use the Social Warfare plugin.

1. Buy, Install and Register Social Warfare
The Social Warfare plugin is not free, but it’s extremely reasonable pricing-wise. A single site license is just $29, while a package for up to five websites is $135. Once you buy the plugin, go ahead and install Social Warfare just like any other plugin. Once it’s installed, you’ll need to register the plugin.

2. Activate Share Recovery
Once you customize the styles for your plugin (optional), you can head to the “Advanced” tab. Scroll down until you see “Share Recovery” with an on/off toggle for “Activate Share Recovery”. Click the button to activate share recovery (the button will toggle and turn green.)

3. Review Previous URL Options
Note, you don’t need to change anything here when just changing domain names. But it’s good to review this list in case you had permalink changes, you are migrating to https, etc. I mentioned these options earlier in the post and this is where you would select or enter the options matching your own specific url change. But again, for straight domain name changes, you don’t need to change these options. Keep them as-is. But again, you must still activate share recovery like we did in step 2 for domain name changes.

4. Copy and Refine Code For Your Theme’s functions.php File
I mentioned earlier that a straight domain name change isn’t handled via the options in the UI. Instead, you’ll need to use the code below and paste it into your theme’s functions.php file. Then you’ll need to edit two lines of the code. Note, if you don’t know where that file is located, contact your designer or developer. They can point you to the file quickly.

Also, make sure you back up your site before making any changes. You should be doing this anyway, but it’s always good to ensure you have a backup before you make any changes (even minor ones like this). And make sure you have a backup of your functions.php file so you can always re-upload that older version if needed.

Here’s the code you need to copy :

//* Custom Share Recovery for Social Warfare add_filter('swp_recovery_filter','custom_recovery_filter'); function custom_recovery_filter($permalink) { $current_domain = 'http://www.domain1.com/'; $former_domain = 'http://www.domain2.com/'; $permalink = str_replace($current_domain,$former_domain,$permalink); return $permalink; }

5. Edit The Code, Add Your Own Domain Names
The only two lines of code you need to edit are the current domain and former domain lines. This should match your WordPress install. The easiest way to know what to put here is to check your General WordPress settings. For example, if your install is in a directory, then that will look different than a root install.

For this example, let’s say the WordPress install is in the /blog directory of your website. Then the two lines of code you enter would look like this:

$current_domain = ‘http://www.domain1.com/blog’;

$former_domain = ‘http://www.domain2.com/blog’;

Again, check your General Settings in WordPress, which will provide exactly what you should include in the code. If you don’t match that exactly, then share recovery will not work. I repeat, if this doesn’t match perfectly, your old shares will not show up.

6. Testing The Setup
Remember, “Share Recovery” must be turned on in the UI for this to work (covered earlier). So even though you are adding code to your theme’s functions.php file, you still need that option turned on in the WordPress settings for the plugin.

Next, once you upload the new functions.php file, there are querystring parameters you can add to your urls that will show the previous url at the top of the post (using the old domain name), while also rebuilding the Social Warfare cache. This will help you debug and test the setup. If you don’t clear the Social Warfare cache, then you might not see the true share count. So it may be working, but you simply won’t think it’s working. Note, the old url will only show up for you, since you are using the parameters I’ll give you in a second. Normal visitors will not see the old url.

So, add the following querystring parameters to the end of any url you want to test that has older social shares. Once you do, and refresh those urls, you should see the old url at the top of the post and then the share count should reflect shares from both the old and new urls.

Test the setup using hte following querystring parameters:
?swp_cache=rebuild&swp_recovery_debug=true

For example, if your new url was:

http://www.domain2.com/blog/sample-post/

…then the url with the parameters would be:

http://www.domain2.com/blog/sample-post/?swp_cache=rebuild&swp_recovery_debug=true

And if you already have querystring parameters at the end of your urls, then you need to append these parameters. To do that, use an ampersand (&) versus the question mark (?)

For example:
http://www.domain2.com/blog/?p=264&swp_cache=rebuild&swp_recovery_debug=true

7. Enjoy your updated share counts and benefit from social proof again.
If the share count changed (increased), you’re good to go. Please send chocolates, golf balls, or new darts to the address listed on my site. :) You can rest assured that your older posts will reflect shares from both the old url and new one (combining domains). That’s for most urls. More about that next.

Side Note: What’s up with Facebook?
Note, I’ve seen some very strange things with Facebook counts (and this is NOT just a Social Warfare issue). For some reason, Facebook will sometimes not show the accurate number of shares from the old url. It does work for many, but not for all. I can’t explain why that’s happening and I’m pretty sure nobody can. So, you might see some urls that regain almost all of their Facebook shares, while others don’t get all of them back. Hey, those are the breaks. You can’t win them all.

Summary – Recover Social Proof Using Social Warfare For WordPress
Changing urls on a site can be a risky proposition. And although many people focus on the SEO impact, social can also take a hit. When changing urls, you can end up losing all social shares, which can be horrible when you’ve spent a lot of time and resources building those shares! But by using Social Warfare, you can regain those lost shares (and keep building them as time goes on).

I recommend trying Social Warfare. I think you’ll dig it. Good luck.

How To Hack Boosted Posts Via Facebook Ads Manager To Target Multiple Custom Audiences At One Time

June 2, 2016 By Glenn Gabe 7 Comments

Boosting Facebook posts to custom audiences is a great way to reach a targeted audience (and at a relatively low cost). Many people running Facebook pages don’t realize this, but you don’t have to boost a post simply to your fanbase. Instead, you can boost a post to any custom audience you have set up in Facebook. That includes people on your email list, people that have visited your website, and any lookalike audiences you have created. That’s where the true power lies.

By boosting to a custom audience, you are getting in front of people that already know of your brand, have engaged with your company in the past, etc. Your boosted posts can show up in the News Feed (both desktop and mobile), and you’ll find boosting an incredibly cost-effective way to advertise. In my experience, boosting to a custom audience has yielded strong engagement with low cost. And that’s a great combination for any advertiser.

The Problem – How Traditional Boosted Posts Work
So you can tell I’m a big fan of boosting posts, but I haven’t explained the part of boosting that annoys the heck out of me. When you boost a post the traditional way (right from your Facebook page), you don’t have many targeting options available. You can select a single custom audience, but you cannot combine that custom audience with other targeting options. That means that you might not be able to gain the momentum you might be looking for from the boost. For example, wouldn’t it be great to boost a post to multiple lookalike audiences all at one time?

The only way to target another custom audience for a traditional boost is to change the targeting down the line (you can switch from one custom audience to another, but you can’t combine them.) Here’s an example of “resetting” the targeting for a boost down the line:

From an overall targeting standpoint with traditional boosted posts, you can’t geotarget by country or city, you can’t layer on other targeting like demographics or interests, and you can’t select multiple custom audiences at one time. And if you’re targeting lookalikes (which are currently built by country), you cannot target multiple lookalike audiences to reach several countries at one time. So boosting is great, but there are limitations… until you learn what I’m about to show you. :)

Can You Boost A Single Post To Multiple Target Audiences At One Time?
Yes, you can. And I find many people don’t even know it’s possible. But you can’t accomplish this by using the traditional method for boosting Facebook posts. But, by using Ads Manager or Power Editor, you can boost a post by creating a specific campaign for the boost. And when you do, you have all the power of Facebook ads combined with the power of custom audiences. You’ll be able to set up multiple ad sets with their own targeting, you’ll have many more targeting options available, and you’ll be able to target multiple audiences (in multiple countries) from the boost all at one time.

What About Likes, Shares, and Comments? Where Will They Show Up?
It’s important to know that all likes, shared, and comments from your boosted posts will show up in the original Facebook post (when boosted via Ads Manager). I know some people think that since you are creating ads via Facebook Ads Manager that any likes, shares, and comments will not show up in the original post. That’s not true… they definitely will. For example, see the screenshot below.

How To Set Up a Boosted Post Campaign Via Ads Manager
Let’s say you just posted a new update on your Facebook page and you want to boost that post. But, you want to boost the post to multiple custom audiences, including lookalikes from across multiple countries, all at one time. Good luck trying to do that with a typical boost.

Instead of using a traditional boost, we’re going to set up a campaign in Ads Manager for boosting the post. And when we do, we’ll be able to set up multiple ad sets, combine audiences, and reach multiple lookalike audiences across countries, all in one shot. Here we go.

1. Set Up Your “Boosted Posts” campaign.
Go to Ads Manager and create a new campaign. Choose the consideration marketing objective and “Engagement” which uses the page post engagement objective. Give your campaign a name at the bottom of the screen and click continue.

2. Define Your Audience
OK, this is one of the core reasons to use Ads Manager to boost an update. This is where you can select your custom audiences, combine those audiences, target lookalikes across multiple countries, etc. You also have tight control over geotargeting. For example, you can even target specific cities within a country if you want. You can also layer on additional targeting, like age, gender, language, and interests. Seriously, you have killer options here compared to simply boosting a post.

3. Choose Placements
Next you can choose where your boosted posts show up in Facebook. I typically select both desktop and mobile News Feed, but you also have options for Instagram and Desktop Right Column.

4. Budget and Schedule
You’ll notice you have much more control over your budget and scheduling when boosting a post via Ads Manager. You can set your budget, the type of optimization for ad delivery, you can use ad scheduling if you use the lifetime budget option, you can set delivery type, and more. I told you that you’ll have more control… Once you’re done, click continue.

5. Select Creative
Now you can select the Facebook post that you want to boost. You can also create a post to boost if you want to start fresh. For this example, select the Facebook page you want to use, and then select a post to boost. Once selected, you’ll see the post show up in the ad preview area. That’s where you can preview the boost across the placements you selected in step three (Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, etc.)

6. Review Your Order
I typically click “Review Order” at the bottom of the window to make sure everything looks ok before launching the campaign. If everything looks good with your settings, then click “Place Order”. Once you do, the boost will go into review, and it should go live shortly.

Bonus: Create Additional “Boosted” Ad Sets
Since the boost was created in Ads Manager as a typical Facebook campaign, you’ll notice there is an ad set created for you. Targeting and budget are completed at the ad set level, so you can actually duplicate that ad set to target multiple audiences and countries by ad set if you want. You can also set different budgets per ad set. Again, you have much greater control by using Ads Manager.

For example, maybe you want to have ad sets by country so you can analyze each one at a granular level. You can also have greater control over budget by using multiple ad sets. And once again, it’s important to know that you cannot accomplish this with a typical boosted post. Here’s an example of multiple ad sets for a boosted post targeting separate custom audiences with distinct budgets.

A Note About Power Editor and Boosted Post Campaigns:
For those of you that love Power Editor (PE), you can absolutely set up boosted post campaigns in PE (using the page post engagement objective). The process is slightly different, and a little more involved, but you can definitely achieve exactly what I explained in this post when using Power Editor. I won’t provide the step-by-step instructions in this post, but just know that you can create boosted post campaigns via both Ads Manager and Power Editor. Here’s a screenshot from Power Editor where you can see the option for “Post Engagement”.

Summary – Hack Those Boosted Posts!
After reading this post, I hope you see the power of boosting Facebook posts via Ads Manager or Power Editor. By doing so, you have much more control over custom audience targeting, geographic targeting, demographic targeting, budget, and more. Boosting posts via Ads Manager definitely enables you to overcome some of the shortcomings of a traditional boost. I recommend trying it out soon and testing out various options. I think you’re going to dig it. Boost away.

How Does The Facebook News Feed Work? – Notes From Adam Mosseri’s 2016 F8 Presentation (Head of Product for News Feed)

April 25, 2016 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

Although many people associate algorithms with Google, Facebook also has many algorithms running on a regular basis. And I can’t think of one more important than its News Feed algorithm. That’s what determines the posts and updates you see when you log into your account. With most people having hundreds of “friends”, while also liking many Pages and publishers, the News Feed has gotten very crowded over the past few years. So, Facebook uses an algorithm to determine what shows up, and in which order. And that order can have a serious impact on businesses trying to reach a targeted audience.

For example, if your posts end up ranking highly in the News Feed for many people you are connected with, you can get in front of a lot of eyeballs and end up with a boatload of targeted traffic. That can impact ad revenue, sales, sign-ups, or any number of conversions that apply to your business. If your posts end up ranking low in the News Feed, then you have little chance at gaining those eyeballs.

As you can guess, many wonder how the News Feed algorithm actually works. In other words, what does Facebook take into account when ordering the News Feed? Well, at Facebook’s F8 conference this year, Adam Mosseri, the VP of Product Management for News Feed, presented that very topic. And even better, Facebook recorded a video of his presentation. The presentation was short, but contained some key pieces of information about how the News Feed works. So I decided to take some notes based on Adam’s slides, including the time of each statement.

I highly recommend you watch the video for yourself. There are some great bits of information about how Facebook’s News Feed ticks. Below, you’ll find my notes along with the timecode of each section (so you can jump directly to those parts).

Notes from Adam Mosseri’s presentation about how the News Feed works:

0:50 When The News Feed Algorithm Kicks In
Adam explained that when a publisher first posts a story on Facebook, nothing happens from a News Feed algo perspective. The algo only kicks when someone that is your friend or follows your page logs in and has an opportunity to see your post. That’s when Facebook looks at that story, and all of the other stories that can be shown to those people. Then they are all evaluated by the News Feed algorithm.

1:20 The Number One Input (and it makes sense)
Yes, basic and obvious, but worth noting. The number one input in the News Feed algo is who you friend and which publishers you follow. This is pretty obvious, since that’s the basis for seeing any update on Facebook. For example, if you don’t follow a publisher or have someone as a friend on Facebook, you can’t see their post (or a post they have engaged with) in your News Feed.

2:10 How The News Feed Algorithm Analyzes Updates
Each story (update) is looked at one at a time. The algo tries to determine if you will be interested in that post based on a number of factors/signals. For example, will you like the story, read the story, share it, etc? Those actions are proxies to knowing if a user will be interested in the story.

2:44 Strongest Facebook News Feed Signals/Factors
Facebook then predicts if a user will take these actions based on a number of factors. The top signals include who posted the update, the amount of interactions on a post (i.e. likes and comments), the type of content (photos, video, etc.), and your previous actions with that entity on Facebook (your friend or publisher you follow). For example, how much has a user engaged with that person or publisher?

And the News Feed algorithm definitely takes recency into account (although importance of a post will trump recency). “Recency is a really important signal for relevance, but it’s not the only important signal.” Adam gave a simple example of his cousin that got engaged on a Friday, but he hadn’t been on Facebook since then (a few days). Then this morning his brother-in-law posted his breakfast sandwich. Facebook’s New Feed algorithm would determine that he was more interested in his cousin’s engagement versus the breakfast sandwich. So relevance beats recency in a number of situations.

4:00 Relevancy Score Calculation
A relevancy score is calculated for each story and then the News Feed for a given user is ordered by those relevancy scores. Relevancy scores are specific to each Facebook user. This happens each time someone logs into Facebook (or presumably whenever someone refreshes their News Feed). So, you log in, all of the possible posts that can show in your News Feed are scored. Then they are ordered by relevancy score.

5:00 Facebook Receiving Feedback About News Feed Quality
Facebook has two primary mechanisms for receiving important feedback about the quality of the News Feed. It looks at what people do and then what people say. First, Facebook can see what users are doing. Are they liking and engaging with the content? Are they spending time on the site, and with specific posts? How much value are users gaining from the content in their News Feed?

But, Facebook knows there are certain types of posts where engagement might not happen. For example, a post about someone’s dog that passed away. A person might not engage with that post, but it’s still important to them. That’s where Adam brought up the Feed Quality Program, which has two components.

The first is the Feed Quality Panel, which includes many people that organize their own stories based on interest. Then Facebook can compare their order to how the News Feed would have picked the order. For those heavily involved in SEO, this is very similar to Google’s Quality Raters.

The second component includes online surveys that happen on Facebook every day (for ordinary users). There are tens of thousands of surveys per day asking users how interested they are in a specific story in the News Feed. This happens in over thirty languages, and all around the world geographically. Then Facebook can compare how interested they were to how interested the News Feed algo thought they would be (as a quality measure).

6:30 News Feed Controls For Users
Facebook knows they always don’t get it right… which is why Facebook introduced controls for users. Adam explained the various controls Facebook has created for users (so they can tailor they own News Feeds). For example, he explained the importance of following and friending (and that it’s very clear how they work). Second, Adam explained that unfollowing is important too. By doing so, your News Feed experience “will get more interesting”. You can also hide any post in the News Feed, and Facebook will try and show you less of that type of post in the future. Again, making your News Feed experience more interesting. Last, he mentioned “see first” (which I love by the way). Using “see first”, you can select people or publishers that you find the most interesting (and who you want to show up at the top of your News Feed each time).

Adam explained these controls can help “correct” Facebook and make the News Feed more relevant over time. I thought that was a great statement. Hey, anyone in SEO can tell you that algos aren’t perfect. :)

7:30 What This Means For Publishers
Adam ended his presentation with some tips for publishers. First, he said to create compelling headlines. He made sure to say that he did not mean click bait headlines… He said to give people a real sense of the content behind the headline. For example, be clear and honest (but still compelling). He explained Facebook knows that “people really enjoy this type of content and that Facebook does what it can to make sure it does well in the system.”

Second, he said to avoid overly promotional content. Facebook knows people don’t like getting bombarded with overly promotional content, so try not to do that. Your audience might get less interested in your content over time. Facebook has brought this up before, as heavy promotion can turn off users.

Third, and most important according to Adam, he explained to experiment and try new things. “What’s best for your audience is probably not what’s best for a different publisher’s audience.” He said to experiment with long-form content, short-form content, video, images, try different tones, etc. The point is to see how those changes work for your specific audience, which leads to Adam’s final tip about publisher tools — analysis.

In order to analyze how well your efforts are working, Facebook provides a set of publisher tools that can help you understand what’s resonating with your audience. For example, analyze posts to view engagement, reach, and more.

8:30 Adam Highlights Audience Optimization Tool (Part of publisher tools.)
After running through his tips, Adam called out Facebook’s Audience Optimization Tool as a great way to help tailor your posts to specific segments of your audience. You can tell Facebook what your specific update is about and then Facebook will use that information when considering how interesting the post will be for specific followers. In other words, Facebook will try and match the post up with people that have already shown an interest in that specific topic.

And you can use Audience Restrictions to do the opposite. You can tell Facebook who you don’t think will be interested in the content. By using both pieces of functionality that are part of audience optimization, you can help Facebook focus your update on who will actually be interested in the content.

And last, you can analyze insights based on using the Audience Optimization tool to see what’s working and what’s not. And then based on the performance, you can experiment with refining your targeting to make sure you are driving the most engagement from your posts.

Summary – News Feed Information Directly From The Source
I love when people directly from Google or Facebook explain how their algorithms work. Adam’s video, although short, provided some interesting information directly from the person leading product for Facebook’s News Feed. Again, I recommend watching the video, reading through my notes, and then mapping out a plan of attack for your own efforts on Facebook. And if you have any questions or comments, feel free to provide them below!

Facebook Ads for eCommerce – How To Combine Custom Audiences, Lookalikes, and Unpublished Posts to Target Customers and Similar Users

August 12, 2013 By Glenn Gabe 6 Comments

I used to be extremely critical of Facebook Ads in the past. But that’s before Facebook released a boatload of functionality for enhancing your campaigns. Sure, marketplace ads, or ads running the right sidebar, have seen declining engagement over the years, but that’s just a fraction of what you can do now with Facebook Ads. And I’m finding many advertisers don’t know about the powerful options available to them.

For example, there’s FBX (or retargeting on Facebook), news feed targeting, mobile-only targeting, promoted posts, custom audiences, lookalike audiences, unpublished posts, etc. And with this enhanced functionality comes better targeting and performance. Now, I still think paid search can reach someone who is searching for a specific solution at the exact time they need it, and social advertising can’t do that (yet). But, using advanced targeting within Facebook can absolutely make an impact, and on multiple levels.

In this post, I’m going to explain one method of using three pieces of functionality in Facebook Ads that might change your view of social advertising. It has for me, and I’ve been using this technique for some time now. It leverages unpublished posts, custom audiences, and lookalike audiences to target your current customers, and users similar to your customers, when you are running a specific promotion or sale. It’s a great way to make the most of your current assets, and at a relatively low cost.

Meet Unpublished Posts
I find many business owners have no idea what unpublished posts are. If you fit into this category, then today is your lucky day. Unpublished posts enable page owners to create page updates that don’t get shared with their entire fan base. In addition, you can run ads based on the unpublished posts and use a wealth of ad targeting to reach the right audience (which can include current customers). Interesting, right?

The easiest way to create an unpublished post is to use Power Editor. And if you’re running Facebook Ads and not using Power Editor, you should start today. It offers a lot of functionality and targeting options not available in Ads Manager (which is what advertisers use on Facebook’s website).

By clicking “Manage Pages” in Power Editor, you can actually craft a page post. But since we want an unpublished post, you can create the update and not publish it. That’s ultra-important, since we want to use the post as an ad, and not an update that’s broadcast to your entire fan base.

So, if you’re an ecommerce provider running a specific sale, you could create an update focusing on that sale, with an understanding it will reach a very specific audience (and not every fan). I’ll cover how to target specific parts of your customer list soon, including people that are similar to those users. Once you create your post, you can click your account ID in the left pane to return to your ads dashboard (in Power Editor).

Now we’re ready to talk about custom audiences and lookalikes.

Meet Custom Audiences and Lookalikes
I wrote a post earlier in the year about custom audiences in Facebook. You should read that post to learn how to set them up. You’ll need a custom audience in order to use the method I’m covering in this post (since that’s the audience you will target, and it’s also the list you will use to create a lookalike audience).

Custom audiences enable you to upload a list of current customers, based on your in-house email list. Then, Facebook will match up the list with users on the social network. Yes, you read that correctly. That means you can target your in-house email list (or parts of that list) via Facebook Ads. Awesome, right?

Once your custom audience is created, you can use that list to target current customers with specific promotions and sales. And you can use unpublished posts to reach them. Did you catch that? I said unpublished posts. That means getting your targeted promotion in front of your current customers (whether they are fans of your page or not).

Great, but what’s a lookalike?
Lookalike audiences enable you to base a new audience (set of Facebook users) on a custom audience (your current customers). Facebook reviews a number of characteristics about your custom audience (your current customer base), and then finds people similar to your customers. Yes, once again, eye-opening targeting opportunity ahead.

Imagine you had five custom audiences set up, all containing specific customers for specific categories of products. Then you could use lookalikes to find similar people (which you can then target via Facebook Ads). The old days of Facebook ads seem so caveman-like, right? :)

How To Set Up Lookalikes
Once you have set up a custom audience (following my tutorial), then you can easily select that audience in Power Editor, and choose “Create Similar Audience”. Choose “Similarity” in the dialog box and Facebook will find users that are similar to your in-house list (based on a number of criteria). It could take up to 24 hours to create the list, but I’ve seen it take much less time than that (especially for smaller lists).

Combining Unpublished Posts, Custom Audiences, and Lookalikes
OK, we have covered unpublished posts that contain targeted messages about new promotions or sales. We have also covered custom audiences based on our in-house email list. And, we have covered lookalike audiences, which enable us to target similar people to our own customers. Now we are ready to tie them together.

1. Create a New Campaign
In Power Editor, you can create a new campaign and set the campaign parameters like name, budget, etc.

2. Create a New Ad
Click the “Ads” tab to create your ad. Under “Type”, choose “Ad”, and then select the radio button labeled “For a Facebook Page Using a Page Post”. That will enable you to choose an unpublished post for your ad.

3. Choose a Destination
For “Destination”, choose your Facebook Page. Note, your page’s image and title will still link users to your page, but the post itself can drive users to the sale landing page on your website. Your post itself is where you should place the link to your landing page (on your own site). In addition, you should add tracking parameters to your destination urls for your unpublished post (so you can track each campaign via your analytics package).

4. Select An Unpublished Post
Now, choose your unpublished post to use that post as the actual ad. Note, you can also create your unpublished post at this stage (using Power Editor). That’s a nice feature that was recently added.

5. Choose your placement:
OK, how awesome is this? You get to choose where your unpublished post shows up. For example, in the News Feed (Desktop and Mobile). This is the most powerful placement in my opinion. Your ads will show up directly in someone’s news feed versus along the right side.

6. Choose Your Targeting
Under “Audience”, you can choose targeting, based on the goals of your campaign. Note, this is not where you will choose your custom or lookalike audience, although the tab is titled “Audience”. You can choose location, age, gender, etc. if you want more granular targeting than just the custom audiences we created earlier.

7. Choose Your Audience (Yes, this is what we’ve been waiting for.)
Under “Advanced Options”, you’ll notice the first field is titled “Custom Audiences”. If you start typing in that field, your custom audience should show up (based on what you named the audience when you created it). Once selected, it should show up in the field. You can leave the rest of the targeting options located below as-is.

Clarification Side Note:
To clarify what we’ve been doing, this ad will target your current customer list. When you create a second campaign, you can choose your lookalike audience. Then you can run both campaigns and target both your current customer list and people similar to your current customers. And since they are in separate campaigns, with separate tracking parameters, you can track performance by audience. Awesome.

8. Select Your Pricing and Status Options
For this example, let’s choose CPC and enter the desired cost per click. Facebook will provide a suggested CPC to the right. Once completed, you’re ready to rock.

9. Upload Your Campaign
Click “Upload” in Power Editor and your ad will be uploaded to Facebook, where it will need to be approved. Once approved, you’ll receive a notification that your unpublished post is live.

Why this approach works:

1. Exposure and Sharing
By using this approach, you can get your latest sale or promotion in front of your current customers as they browse Facebook, while also providing a great opportunity for that sale or promotion to get shared. For example a current customer might like your update, and it could hit their friends’ news feeds, which can provide even more exposure and opportunities to land new customers.

2. Engagement
Even though the unpublished post is technically an ad, it still looks and works like a typical page post update. That means users can like, share, and comment on the post. And yes, users often do like and comment on unpublished post ads. Remember, the unpublished post ad is hitting users’ news feeds (both desktop and mobile), so there is a strong chance they will be exposed to your ad. And if it’s crafted well, then there’s a chance that a certain percentage of that audience will engage with the post. It’s a great way to engage your current customers, while also engaging similar people (via a lookalike audience).

3. Page Likes
Gaining more page likes is an added benefit to using this approach. Sure, you want people to click through to your sale landing page and buy, but you probably also want more page likes (so you can reach more people with your organic status updates down the line). I’ve seen unpublished post ads work extremely well for gaining more page likes (across industries). For example, a recent campaign I launched increased page likes by 7% during a one week period. Not bad, when you take into account the other benefits from running the campaign (like exposure, sharing, engagement, and sales – which I’ll cover next).

4. Sales (and other important conversions)
Using this approach can yield a low CPA, high ROAS method for increasing sales for specific promotions. I’ve run campaigns where the CPC was under $0.40 per click, and depending on the specific campaign, return on ad spend (ROAS) can be extremely strong. For example, 2000 clicks at $0.40 per click is $800. A conversion rate of 2.0% and an average order value of $75 would yield $3000 in revenue and 275% ROAS. That’s just a small and quick example, but unpublished page post ads could yield a shot in the arm pretty quickly.

And from a B2B standpoint, with average order values typically much higher than B2C, the ROAS could be even greater. Even a handful of sales could generated thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in revenue. For example, a recent campaign I launched for a client focused on items starting at $1000 (and some were up to $5000 per item). Even one sale at $5K based on the campaign I mentioned before would yield a strong ROAS.

And let’s not forget other important micro-conversions on your website. For example, newsletter signups, which can be a great driver of revenue for any ecommerce provider, app downloads, requests for more information, etc. all fall under this category and can start forging a relationship between prospective customers and your business.

What’s the Downside?
OK, I love using this approach, but social advertising brings some unique challenges with it. Since what we’ve covered is an actual page post, and not a straight ad, users can interact with it. That means both positive and negative interaction can occur. For example, you might have some unhappy customers post their negative feedback in the unpublished page post ad. How you deal with that situation is for another post, but I always recommend addressing the problem directly (in the post). But again, there are several situations that can arise, and I’ll try and address them in a future post. Just keep in mind that users can comment, and those comments might not always be positive.

The Power of Unpublished Posts, Custom Audiences, and Lookalikes
After reading this post, I hope you better understand the power of using unpublished posts along with custom audiences and lookalike audiences. Unfortunately, the features and functionality I covered in the post are not readily apparent to many Facebook advertisers. And that’s a shame, since they can be extremely effective for businesses looking to engage current customers and new audiences, while also increasing sales. I recommend testing this approach soon to see if it can be effective for your business.

You can start today. Create a custom audience, create a lookalike audience, and use Power Editor to create unpublished post ads. You may never look back. :)