What to do about declining social ad support

If you’re not new to social ads, you’ve probably noticed a decline in ad support.

First, Facebook removed your ability to call in. Next, it disabled the chat function – the chat function made it possible for you to reach out to a Facebook representative who could answer your questions, and help you troubleshoot your account. Now your only course of action is to submit a support ticket to receive an email or phone call response in 24 hours.

Twitter historically offered better ad support, with an account representative and support option. However, Twitter has also disabled the chat function and for the most part eliminated your ability to submit support tickets.

The industry has shifted to a “help forum” model, where advertisers must hunt for the answers to their questions by browsing through countless “help” articles.

While eliminating ad support may reduce the employee count, and the bottom line, it does make it very difficult for new advertisers to build strong, successful campaigns on social platforms.

Experienced social ad campaign managers are more important than ever before.

Do I Really Need to Boost My Posts?

Yes. Whenever I suggest Facebook boosting to a client I’m met with trepidation. “Facebook advertising hasn’t really worked for us in the past,” is often the first response I get. I’m then faced with a Mount Everest sized up-hill battle.

Understanding Facebook

Many of my clients use Facebook on a daily basis, utilizing many of the same features that make it so difficult for advertisers or businesses to grow engagement and traffic.

Facebook makes it very easy for potential clients and prospective fans to avoid your posts. For example, a person likes your page, and you think “Yay, I’ve got a captive audience for all my posts. They’ll see every promotion, contest, campaign and sale I promote.”

Unfortunately that’s not how it works.

If I like a page, but never engage with its posts, Facebook will soon remove it from my newsfeed. Why would Facebook do this? I’m essentially telling Facebook, that while I “liked” that page, I’m not really interested in receiving updates. If I like, I can visit that page when I want, but Facebook won’t busy my feed with constant updates.

Wait what? So you’re telling me that I’ve been acquiring fans for nothing?

Not entirely, but sort of.

If your posts aren’t earning engagement (likes, shares, comments) then it’s highly likely that your “fans” aren’t really seeing your posts. Besides the fact that Facebook naturally hides posts that aren’t engaged with, users also have the option to “hide” your posts from their feed, or “unfollow” your posts.

What Can I do?

Here’s where Facebook boosting comes in. Yes, it is convenient that Facebook buries your posts, only to provide you with a way to pay to have your posts viewed, but whoever said Facebook wasn’t in it for the money?

The fact of the matter is, that if you want engagement, and you’re not a well established brand, you’re going to need to do a little boosting in order to spark engagement on your page.

The good news is that once users start engaging with your page, they will start to receive your updates naturally. You’d also be surprised at how far a small budget will go when it comes to engagement.

Measuring Success

As with any marketing campaign, it’s important to track performance. While engagement looks nice on your page, it has to lead to actual conversions in order to show a return on investment. Track traffic from Facebook with Google Analytics, and monitor how many leads/sales your boosting generates.

Will you start boosting? Have you seen success with boosting posts? Contact I Dream of SEO for help managing your social ad campaigns.