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Corbitt Chandler 4/14/20 Corbitt Chandler 4/14/20

The MASSIVE Changes Facebook’s Making To Their Platform Advertisers Need To Know To Win!

Recently, I was provided a summary of some major changes taking place on Facebook’s platform by someone I highly trust and respect. These changes were announced at F8, Facebook’s annual conference (anybody else bother to apply for F8, get accepted and pay for their credentials only to not attend like me?? smh), which takes place in June, so in the world of technology this news is relatively old.

What’s up, guys?!

Corbitt Chandler here… Founder and CEO of Apex Current.

I received the information a few weeks ago and after recently having one of my Business Manager accounts shutdown by Facebook (it’s okay, I have multiple), I wanted to share this info so other agencies, ad buyers, consultants, etc. out there could avoid being in the same type of situation.

With that in mind, I don’t have the original source for this info. If you happen to stumble across this post and know the F8 attendee who crafted this, please provide their name in the comments section so I can credit them in the post (also, if you know them personally, please tell them thank you).

Introduction - A few important housekeeping items of note:

Before diving in, I want to make clear that I have amended what was provided ever so slightly so that it speaks to paid advertisers on the platform. I’ve also reorganized the original info just a bit so that there’s a more of a natural flow, as what I was provided looked to be notes that were taken on the fly at the conference.

Last, but not least, I’ve siloed everything into two parts; the first section revolves around changes in regards to posts and/or ads and a second section that focuses on Facebook Groups, which is what they’ve noted “as the future” of the platform.

Alright, with all of that out of the way, let’s dive in! You’ll have to forgive any typos. My brain has a tendency to move well in advance of my fingers… Plus, the “E” key on my MacBook Pro is broken right now because if you ask my wife apparently I like to make the most obnoxiously loud noise as possible when I type on my keyboard! 💪

Part 1 - Changes to how the algorithm views & optimizes all content (posts, ads, etc.):

The content we post on Facebook is supposed to create meaningful interactions. If it doesn’t, your post is less likely to be seen and suppressed by the algorithm. This extends to ads and why Facebook has removed “Relevance Score” and added the 3 new metrics for advertisers to be able to gauge ad quality as it relates to their targeted audience.

Contests, giveaways, and any posts or ads with language around the word “free” is starting to be suppressed by Facebook. If you are saying “get this free” or “enter this giveaway,” those will be suppressed by the algorithm. This goes back to creating meaningful interactions.

Newsfeed is shrinking. Stories are merging with the newsfeed. Messenger is being favored. Take the time to look through all the available options in Messenger. Messenger is soon going to be separated from the desktop, meaning it will be its own entity. WhatsApp and Messenger will be contained and can be used for direct selling. As mentioned, Facebook is saying that what they’re focused on moving to and the future of the platform revolves around “privacy.”

You CANNOT tell users how to react. In other words, you can’t say things like “Love this post and...” or “Comment below and…” Those phrases will suppress your reach because they are considered engagement baiting. What you should say is something like, “Leave me a heart and…” Engagement baiting includes words like COMMENT, VOTE, REACT, SHARE, TAG.

Teach users (e.g. prospects / clients) to leave a reaction, not a LIKE. Liking a post means nothing to the Facebook algorithm. It does not qualify as an engagement. Users need to LOVE it, react with SHOCK, or use the LAUGHING reaction. This shows positive user experience and will help your organic reach. Comments also boost your reach and GIF’s give you the highest ranking in the algorithm.

Ads are targeting new avenues. You can no longer have a small budget for Facebook ads and expect it to be successful. You need to understand targeting or you’ll be wasting money. Start testing ads in other ways that are not on the newsfeed.

Going LIVE is no longer on Facebook’s radar as an ORGANIC algorithm piece. If you didn’t go live often before, this is good news for you. If you are one who utilized it a lot, you’ll need to find other ways to boost organic reach. However, if your live video creates meaningful engagement, it will boost in algorithm ranking (with the reduction of the algorithm’s organic favoring given to FB Live videos, you may have seen a user or brand - that was aware of this ‘preferential treatment’ - posting a high volume of FB Live videos & with these new changes, has reduced or completely abandoned those efforts entirely).

Links in posts or ads can be determined as click-bait, or something that flags what’s called the “Click Gap Signal.” The Click Gap Signal is a measuring of inbound and outbound link patterns of a site that is being linked out from Facebook. Facebook will reduce the reach if the number of clicks from Facebook is higher than it is in other areas of the internet. In other words, if more people are going to your website via Facebook versus an organic Google search, your post will be considered click-bait or spam. Facebook will suppress it and/or shut down your ad account. While that might not be true, that’s what the algorithm will see (true story - as I mentioned in the intro, recently I had an entire Business Manager account shutdown. Every asset within that account is gone, goodbye, thanks for playing…).

This isn’t necessarily news to any decent ad buyer, but Facebook is tracking the link clicked to the funnel. This means Facebook will follow where the link is going. This could also trigger the Click Gap Signal.

Don’t limit yourself to one platform. Stories, Groups, Messenger, etc. are where you need to be on Facebook, but you should also be on other platforms. Move users away from Facebook to other areas. Spread out your reach. You shouldn’t build your entire business on one platform that you have no control over.

Sharing is not caring. Sharing from your page to your timeline/newsfeed is against the Terms of Service. By dropping your page link in a Sharing is Caring post, you are putting yourself at risk to have your account shut down. Sharing sale posts made on a page you are the admin of is also a no-no. Facebook wants page content to stay on the page. Selling is not allowed on your personal timeline. However, if a user (a non-admin of your page) shares a post from your page, the complete opposite happens. This boosts your ranking in the algorithm. Facebook views this as positive content because a user cared enough about the post to share it. If someone comments on that users shared post, you get an even higher boost.

Understand Facebook’s Community Standards and know that it’s a bot screening your content. It’s important to work within those rules in order to be present on social media. Understanding and following these standards will help boost your ad in the algorithm and help with your ad approvals.

Part 2 - Facebook’s new focus on Groups as the future of the platform’s growth:PART 2 - FACEBOOK’S NEW FOCUS ON GROUPS AS THE FUTURE OF THE PLATFORM:

Facebook is focusing on privacy and making the user experience more intimate. That’s what the algorithms is going to start catering to. If you don’t have a group strategy, getting one going might be a good route. Here are some items to be aware of if you’re the Admin of a group or are implementing a Facebook Group strategy:

Group Admins are responsible for all group activities. If content is posted in a group that goes against Facebook’s Terms of Service (TOS) or Community Standards, admins are at risk to lose their personal profile, their business page, and their group. Admins can be shut down with no recourse.

Negative ratings reflect poorly on the admin team. Negative ratings are the angry face, the sad face, member reported content, and the number of people who block you. These things also reflect poor ratings on groups and suppress reach. Facebook wants the user experience to be positive. Sad or angry face reactions tells Facebook that the user is having a bad experience, therefore diminishing your organic reach.

Post approval process is a responsibility. Admins should have post approval turned on in groups to protect themselves from negative ratings. Questions should be asked for new joins. It’s the admins responsibility to monitor and know who they are allowing in their group.

When members leave the group, they have the choice to take all of their content with them. This applies to admins as well. So if you had an admin that posted great content and then they leave the group, they have the ability to take their posts out of the group.

Sales posts on your page and in your group should be less than 20%. Facebook doesn’t want an abundance of “buy my (insert product / service)” posts because they don’t create meaningful interactions.

Admins should reduce takeovers or change how they are phrased. The word TAKEOVER is being suppressed. Instead, have a PARTY, an AUTHOR GATHERING, or EVENING ENTERTAINMENT.

Reduce the number of admins in the group. Again, this goes back to admin responsibility. The group admins should be you and only one or two other trusted sources.

Create Group Rules within Facebook (not just pinned in the announcements or written in the ‘about’ section of the group). They set the tone for the group and gives you something to point to if someone is not following the rules. It is your responsibility to make sure everyone is on the same page, or you risk losing your account with no recourse.

Link your group to your page. Facebook is going to be coming out with features that are specific to business pages that have groups.

Be a conversation starter in groups. Earn the badge. It shows you are creating meaningful conversations. Users are like you. If you like to see something on Facebook, chances are that they will like it too.

Groups deemed harmful on Facebook will be shut down. As per the statement put out by Facebook “…we identify and remove harmful groups, whether they are public, closed or secret. We can now proactively detect many types of violating content posted in groups before anyone reports them and sometimes before few people, if any, even see them.”

Conclusion - Don’t stand still, we all have to continually evolve:

Take advantage of these updates and changes! If they scare you a little (or a lot), that’s okay! What’s not okay is to stand in the same place doing the same old thing until your ads don’t produce any notable results oor worse. Anything you may see listed above that conflicts with your current strategy is only an opportunity in disguise. Don’t miss the importance of focusing on your groups given that’s where Facebook has decided to move their focus.

Digital marketers and ad buyers evolve everyday. This is just another element we have to evolve with to continue staying on top of our game! It might not be easy because for some of us this might change a great deal of what we’re used to as an effective strategy. As it goes with anything worth doing, the cream will always rise to the top!

Remember, Facebook’s number one product is UX (user experience) and they’re attempting to improve it so that more users spend time on the platform and engaging. Facebook’s number one source of revenue (currently) comes from advertisers so I highly doubt they’re planning to throw the baby out with the bath water. Evolve your strategy and figure out what it takes to win given these new standards (whether that’s for your clients or your business) and you’ll be rewarded for those efforts.

Ultimately, when you do figure out the recipe for success for your business or clients I strongly believe this “meaningful interaction” element Facebook is focusing on will be a game changer in many ways! In the long haul, it will create an environment where prospects who interact with your ads will have higher intent and improve the overall performance of your paid advertising campaigns on Facebook.

Good luck and Godspeed!

Corbitt

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Apex Current Selected As Part of Facebook's Marketing Expert Program!

Apex has been aligned with Facebook's support staff through client accounts that qualified in the past, BUT for Apex Current's account to be included as part of this program is a huge honor. It puts Apex on the map as an Advertiser that is moving up the ranks and getting noticed by Facebook, Inc's paid advertising expert team.

BIG DAY here at Apex Current! We have been selected to take part in Facebook's Marketing Expert Program! This is a MASSIVE WIN for our business and ultimately our amazing clients!

What exactly does this mean? We're glad you asked!

As part of the Marketing Expert Program, Apex Current will have a dedicated support rep allocated to their account. This Marketing Expert will be Apex's "inside man" so to say in running successful paid advertising campaigns for any ads within Apex Current's account.

"I literally cried when I got the call." said Corbitt Chandler, Founder and CEO. "I kept getting calls from a Palo Alto area code so I assumed it was them, but I just figured we were in trouble for something! Ultimately, it turns out, we were one of our Facebook Rep's key accounts and he was desperate to get in touch with me."

In addition to a dedicated Facebook Account Rep, Apex will receive weekly strategy sessions to go through goals and improve ad performance. They will also gain access to features that are in beta mode before other advertisers and key detailed analytics that are typically unavailable to most advertisers on the platform.

"This is such a giant coup for us and our clients!" said Chandler. "We'll be able to take what we're doing to a whole new level and get even better results for our client partners. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. We only win if our partner's ads work and this is a surefire path to their success and our continued growth."

Apex Current is pumped to begin improving their already high-performing ads and truly honored to be considered as part of the program. We'd like to thank all of our amazing clients, vendors and supporters for helping us receive this notable achievement.

Corbitt Chandler 4/4/18 Corbitt Chandler 4/4/18

Trump’s Campaign Said It Was Better at Facebook. Facebook Agrees (via Bloomberg)

Fair warning... There's nothing intended to be political by this post. It's simply to convey the power of Facebook's marketing resources when used effectively.

Fair warning... There's nothing intended to be political by this post. It's simply to convey the power of Facebook's marketing resources when used effectively.

The link to the original article is sited at the bottom of this page.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has boasted often that it made better use of Facebook Inc.’s advertising tools than Hillary Clinton’s campaign did. An internal Facebook white paper, published days after the election, shows the company’s data scientists agree.

“Both campaigns spent heavily on Facebook between June and November of 2016,” the author of the internal paper writes, citing revenue of $44 million for Trump and $28 million for Clinton in that period. “But Trump’s FB campaigns were more complex than Clinton’s and better leveraged Facebook’s ability to optimize for outcomes.”

The paper, obtained by Bloomberg and discussed here for the first time, describes in granular detail the difference between Trump’s campaign, which was focused on finding new donors, and Clinton’s campaign, which concentrated on ensuring Clinton had broad appeal. The data scientist says 84 percent of Trump’s budget asked people on Facebook to take an action, like donating, compared with 56 percent of Clinton’s.

Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump ran 5.9 million different versions of ads during the presidential campaign and rapidly tested them to spread those that generated the most Facebook engagement, according to the paper. Clinton ran 66,000 different kinds of ads in the same period.

As is typical at Facebook, employees had access to the white paper, according to a person familiar with the matter. Employees routinely publish papers so colleagues can dig into issues facing the company and learn how certain products work.

A former Facebook employee cited the information from the white paper in a memo to Representative Adam Schiff’s office in early March, saying it could help Congress ask the right questions about whether the campaign coordinated with Russia. For example, according to the paper, more than a quarter of Trump’s ad spending was tied to third-party data files on voters, and leveraged a Facebook tool that helped the campaign show ads to people who looked similar to the names on file. Clinton’s ads aimed for broader audiences, with only 4 percent of her Facebook spend on the lookalike tool.

“Did Russian operatives give the Trump campaign a list of names to include or exclude from advertising that was running on Facebook?” the former employee asked in the memo.

Republicans shut down the House of Representatives’ investigation into Russia and Trump days later, “leaving questions unanswered, leads unexplored, countless witnesses uncalled, subpoenas unissued,” Schiff, a California Democrat, wrote on Twitter. A Schiff spokesman declined to comment for this story.

But Congress is still focusing on the use of third-party information on Facebook for another reason: the company’s ensuing crisis over data on 50 million users obtained by Cambridge Analytica, a political advertising firm that helped Trump’s campaign. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is set to make his first congressional testimony on the issue in a matter of days.

One key question Zuckerberg is likely to face, raised in the former employee’s memo to Schiff: What lists of Facebook users did Trump’s campaign upload for advertising purposes?

Facebook is still working to unearth other information that congressional investigators have requested. The company is continuing to comb through its site to identify content posted by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization that used Facebook to manipulate public discourse in America ahead of the election. On Tuesday, the company took down more than 270 accounts and pages operated by the IRA that were used to spread messages to people in Russia and neighboring countries.

“This is the next step towards removing them from Facebook entirely,” Zuckerberg wrote Tuesday on his Facebook page. “Organizations like the IRA are sophisticated adversaries who are constantly evolving, but we’ll keep improving our techniques to stay ahead -- especially when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections.”

Click here for the original article.

Corbitt Chandler 3/4/18 Corbitt Chandler 3/4/18

How to Create a Facebook Page

Corbitt here... CEO and Founder of Apex Current Digital Marketing. It looks like there's a significant amount of traffic coming to the site because you want to know how to create a Facebook page.No problemo. I aim to please... It's super simple so chillax. We'll get you through it one step at a time.

Yoooo!

Corbitt here... CEO and Founder of Apex Current Digital Marketing.

It looks like there's a significant amount of traffic coming to the site because you want to know how to create a Facebook page.

No problemo. I aim to please...

It's super simple so chillax. We'll get you through it one step at a time.

Step 1 - Login to your personal Facebook account at www.facebook.com.

Step 2 - While on your newsfeed, go to Pages under Explore next to that red arrow pictured below and click on it. (Side note, how cute is my daughter, Phoebe?!)

Screen Shot 2018-03-04 at 2.06.45 PM.png

Step 3 - That will bring up all of the Pages you have liked and then hiding in the top right corner you'll see where it says "More." Click there and toggle to "Create Page." You can also simply click here to navigate to that section, but I'm all about, "teaching a man to fish."

Step 4 - Select the type of Page you are wanting to create... You can change this later if you need to so it doesn't have to be exact.

Screen Shot 2018-03-04 at 2.15.08 PM.png

Step 5 - Once you decide the type of page you want to create, Facebook will ask you for the Category. For example, if you're a shoe company, it's going to ask you to select shoes and then what the name of your business is and you'll type that in.

Screen Shot 2018-03-04 at 2.16.20 PM.png

After that, it really can't get any easier. Facebook will literally walk you through the process and information you need to provide.

I would go ahead and have the following information ready to make your life a lot easier and this process super simple.

- Business Name

- Profile Picture (Sized 800 x 800)

- Cover Photo (Sized 820 x 312) ... Canva.com is a great resource for sizing images and creating designs.

- Business Address

- Business Phone

- Business Email

- Business About Us / Mission Statement

- Hours of Operation

That's the basic stuff. Just to be clear, you don't need any of it. Facebook will let you proceed without it, but I would just gather it all now. An empty page, looks like your business is struggling or not professional.

On that note, I would start inviting all of your friends and family to like the page and get active posting 1 - 3 times per day. These days you have to promote posts, but that's a topic for a different time. Even putting just $1 behind a post will make a big difference in it's reach.

Alright, guys, hope this helps!

Be EPIC!
Corbitt