It seems hardly a day goes by without some change happening on Facebook. This year is no exception. Facebook have announced some major changes that will impact most users and businesses in one way or another.
In this post, we are going to take you through what the major changes were and how they will impact you.
Here is a summary of most of the major changes since the beginning of the year:
- New rules around how much text can appear on cover photos, posts and ads came into effect - 15/1/2013
- Facebook announces Open Graph Search - 17/1/13
- Conversion Tracking was reintroduced in Facebook - 22/1/2013
- The Power Editor for Facebook Ads Was Updated - 4/3/2013
- Facebook Ad targeting was enhanced with Custom Audiences -
- Facebook announced a new News Feed - 7/3/112
Rules about the text to image ratio for promoted posts, ads and cover photos
Late December, Facebook announced new rules around how much text could appear in an image for Cover Photos, News Feed Ads and Promoted Posts. According to the new policy, the amount of text on a photo's image on needs to be limited to no more than 20 percent of an image’s area. The new policy came into effect January 15.
This means that if you are running Facebook Ads and using promoted posts to build your fan base, you will need to be very careful about not promoting those posts that may have images with more than 20% text on the photo. So our advice is don't tick the box that says "Keep my advert up-to-date by automatically promoting my most recent post." if you do, you could land yourself in hot water for not complying with Facebook's policies.
Note: Previously rules about cover photos were limited having no calls to action, price information, requests to like the page or contact information. This placed the onus on the page owner to build engagement by posting great content.
Facebook Announces Open Graph Search
Facebook launched a new feature that will allow users to search for products, services and business that are connected to them.
Facebook analyzes your relationships with people, photos, interests, and places, and then shows you results based on what your other friends and their friends have liked. The service will be expanded to include posts and open graph actions. What this means is that your search experience is much more personalized.
It's a very cool feature. For example, a Facebook user will be able to type in a query, such as “friends who have renovated lately” and Graph Search looks at all of their relationships (and those of their friends) to find people who have recently renovated.
It then shows images of the people in your network who have recently renovated and displays them alongside relevant content.
This is similar to Google+ where peoples faces appear if they have G plused your content. The key difference is that Facebook Open Graph focuses on people in your world whereas Google search focused on the world.
So what does Facebook’s Graph Search mean for you?
Local businesses wand e-commerce stores could benefit from this provided they optimize their page by having a complete business profile on their page as well as a commitment to building Facebook page content and engagement. If they don't do this then they are unlikely to appear in the Open Graph search results. The focus should therefore be on creating unique and compelling content that is relevant to your fans.
Buying likes without having a strategy to engage your user base will not cut it. It will need to be engaging and related to content that people are searching for. You should leverage this by linking this to your own website as you will be in a far better position if you build content on your own platform first.
As this feature is rolled out and Facebook pages are better optimized, then advertisers will benefit by being able to reach a more precise and targeted audience.
This feature is in BETA only so most people will not be able to access this yet. This announcement heralds the introduction of Facebook as a serious player in the search space.
For example users search experience is likely to shift from typing “Melbourne Renovation specialists” in Google to a much more socially orientated peer-peer search in Facebook; “What builders have my friends used?”.
Like Google+ it may just become an important piece of success online.
Conversion Tracking was reintroduced in Facebook
Facebook announced the launch of a new conversion tracking tool to help advertisers measure the effectiveness of their marketing and optimize their ads.
The tool will enable advertiser to generate code that can be added to any page on a businesses website or landing page so they can measure conversions. This has been a missing piece for people advertising on Facebook unless they used a third party tracking software or Google analytics.
Conversions that can be measured include:
- Checkouts
- Registrations
- Leads
- Key Page Views
- Add to cart actions
- Other website conversions
There are a couple of drawbacks. These are:
- Conversion tracking is not available for Sponsored Stories and other ads that link to pages or apps on Facebook.
- It is unable to track video views which will be important in the future
When advertisers use the the Optimized CPM bidding, the ads will be shown to those users most likely to convert. This is great news for e-commerce businesses and businesses that require a direct response.
Conversions tracking was originally introduced a few years ago but was removed due to user confusion.
Facebook Power Editor Is Updated
The Facebook Power Editor (a free ad management tool provided by Facebook) just got a new update. The new update will give page administrators better flexibility in choosing the ads they want. If you used Power Editor previously, you would know how confusing it was to use.
The updated editor has a more logical flow and makes it easier to choose mobile only, video only or sponsored ads more easily. It's a welcome change but it may be a little frustrating if you were used to the older version.
Facebook News Feed Gets A Redesign
It doesn't seem long ago that Facebook redesigned its look with the introduction of timeline.
This time it's the news feed that will get a new look. The News Feed has been designed to reduce clutter and be more visual. The news feed can be segmented to show everything your friends are sharing, showcase photos, highlight who you are following or see what music your friends are listening too. Stories displayed in each feed will be larger and more visual. This means promoted post ads will also be larger and more visual.
The user experience will be similar on desktop and mobile devices with the left hand menu being accessible on both devices. On the mobile device, users can access specific feeds by pulling down the top of their feed.
Users can opt-in to the new News Feed earlier here.
Summary & Our Take Out
In reviewing all the changes to Facebook so far, it's clear that Facebook will have a greater emphasis on visual storytelling. With Open Graph, the revamped news feed and rules around how much text can appear on cover photos and ads, it clear that visual content is going to be key for businesses to win in Facebook moving forward.
We believe that the changes are about keeping more people within the Facebook platform itself as well as improving how Facebook generate income. Making visuals larger in the news feed will also mean ads will have more prominence. Investing in high quality and original graphics will become more important in differentiating your business and making it stand out.
The three key areas businesses will need to invest in are:
- Developing a strategy and plan to engage fans
- Facebook optimization and advertising to build fans and capitalize on the open graph
- Content generation & graphic creation
Now with Facebook building search into its platform and Google Search becoming more social, businesses will need to win in the social space. This is infinitely more harder than just undertaking traditional "link building" activities.
