Facebook Advertising Tips to Target the Right Audience (Even Better Than Before)

If you’re a marketer posting updates directly from the site, you may have already noticed these new Facebook advertising tips. The social media network has significantly enhanced its publishing options. The new options are definitely worth a look, and could push digital marketers away from external publishing tools. More specifically, the network is making three new options available for marketers.

The New Publishing Options

1. Interest Targeting

If you’re familiar with Facebook advertising, this paragraph will sound familiar. After clicking on the crosshair button toward the bottom of publishing a new post, you can now target that post specifically to parts of your audience based on their interests and behaviors. You can now utilize targeting options that were previously only available for promoted posts, such as education level, location or interest, for any new post you publish.

2. Setting an End Date

Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm directs posts to your audience’s newsfeed not based on recency, but on various factors such as engagement on the post, previous engagement by the user with the brand, etc. Unfortunately, that means your audience may see a time-sensitive post when it’s already too late, which makes your brand look bad. Facebook’s new ability to set an end date should help prevent that from happening in the future. Now, you can specify when exactly your post will not be shown in your audience’s newsfeed anymore, though it will still remain part of your timeline.

3. Smart publishing

The third new tool is definitely the most vague out of the three. Unlike the other two, it’s only being piloted by a select few business pages, so we have to rely on Facebook’s explanation to argue its merits. When this feature is enabled, the network will automatically share popular links to your website – such as a trending story or a contest – to your audience, without you having to create a post about it. These posts won’t show up on your timeline, but you’ll be able to monitor their activity and engagement through Facebook Insights.

What The New Options Mean for Inbound Marketers

Smart publishing, if it works as Facebook promises, could have a huge impact on your inbound marketing efforts. If the goal of inbound marketing is to drive your audience to your website, the network will help you do just that by automatically sharing your links to your audience. But it only does so with popular/frequently shared links, so the onus remains on digital marketers to get the word out about new content to be shared.

Of course, the other tools also have intriguing possibilities for inbound marketers. Increased targeting options allow you to post your content specifically to those segments of your audience who will be interested in it. If you’ve identified what differentiates users at the bottom of the sales funnel from those at the top, you may even be able to target your posts based on that. End dates are a simple practical improvement, but nonetheless help in improving your brand image and positioning yourself as a thought leader.

Once again, Facebook has taken steps to help its online marketers. The network continues to improve its services and adapt to the ever-changing field of digital marketing, and inbound marketers are getting an improved marketing channel as a result. For more Facebook advertising tips, check out our blog post on how to have a successful online presence.