What Facebook’s changes mean to advertisers

Almost as soon as Facebook announced new changes, businesses had plenty of questions about the fallout, and what to do about it. In general, the changes show that Facebook is becoming more of a one-stop shop for communication, entertainment, conversation, and ultimately, decision making. That also means people are sharing all of their experiences—both the good and the bad.

For advertisers and brands, they must continue to play within the social space and follow the rules: Don’t talk at people, rather make them want to connect with you. With all of these new changes, users have more to do than ever, and also more to forget about. As advertisers, we don’t want this to happen to us.

What should you do about it?

• It’s only going to get better and broader. Advertisers can now target everything from initial demographic info to music, food, and lifestyle habits in real time. So, instead of qualifying targets based on “likes,” you will be able to serve targeted ads to actual viewership and usage, which opens up targeting opportunities previously not available anywhere.

• Make sure you’re easily found. You have social tags on all websites, all social media profiles, and content is bite-sized and shareable for consumers to post around.

•  Review your social media strategy. See how you can take advantage of the changes to meet your brand goals, while giving consumers relevant content they want.

•  Review your Facebook profile. Based on the new timeline look and feel, can you adopt that type of design and overview of your business? Make sure you are loading all the content onto your site directly. With sharing statistics now visible to anyone coming to your page, make the content and page shareable. Focus on bite-sized content for pass along value.