Facebook has been piloting Instant Articles with a few hundred publishers since May 2015 but now plans to roll the feature out to all publishers and Pages this April. Described as an "incredibly fast and immersive reading experience for people on Facebook", Instant Articles have a number of advantages for publishers (and that includes you if you have articles on your website) because it gives full control over the look of articles and 100% of revenue generation from the ads served by you...

I've been utterly despairing of Facebook's organic reach recently. All the usual algorithm friendly tricks and techniques were failing miserably. Even the darling of Facebook, video clips that Facebook itself tells me is engaging (based on what it sees in terms of clicks as a percentage of views) have been dragging along at less than 5% reach. Clearly the drive to force us all into paying for visibility is well and truly kicking in. The only content I've seen consistently good reach in recent...

Facebook's been busy with a bunch of updates recently and some are really quite significant. The biggest from an advertiser perspective is the launch of Lead Ads but the one that will get the most media coverage is the so-called Dislike or "Emotion" buttons. Local business verification is also an important one for many brands. Here's a quick roundup with links to articles that explain the topic in more depth. Facebook Lead Ads Lead Ads are like any other ads except that when you hit the cal...

Hello Facebook You know, it's OK. I get the thing about reduced organic reach. We've all had a free ride for far too long and far too many brands have pumped out turgid content that no one, not even their fans, is interested in. So I'm not even going to mention that. And thanks for all the recent improvements - calls to action all over the place, carousel ads, that great search function within Publishing Tools, targeting by interest on Posts, clamping down on clickbait. But there are a ...

I'm in the process of writing a guide for Smart Insights on Facebook marketing and thought I'd include a business case for investing in the platform. Would be great to have your comments and ideas too: Why should you be using Facebook in your business? There are many reasons to use Facebook (even in a B2B setting), not least because more of your potential customers will regularly find themselves there above any other platform. But let's look at some of the advantages (with a few caveats thrown...

We're big fans of Jon Loomer at The Digiterati and we're delighted to see his comprehensive 2015 Facebook image dimensions infographic. Particularly like the distinction given to the mobile safe area on the cover photo because so many brands fail to check the look of their photo on anything other than desktop. Courtesy of: JonLoomer.com

There's not a lot that Facebook offers brands for free any more but here's a little known technique that might just net you a few new fans without having to shell out any advertising spend. Most reasonably popular posts on a brand's Facebook Page end up surfacing occasionally on the newsfeed of non fans - normally in the form of a notification that a friend has liked or commented on the post. With a really popular post you'll often find a domino effect whereby you pick up Likes to the post fr...

With ever lowering Facebook reach, fan acquisition on Facebook is increasingly less of a desirable goal. Yet I do believe that the platform still has a major role to play for many brands, not least because of the ubiquity of the platform, but also for its simply awesome targeting potential. Savvy brands are using the platform to acquire new potential customers, but not necessarily as fans, instead they are using Facebook’s wealth of advertising opportunities to data capture email address...