The post You Asked For It: Organic Preview is Here first appeared on Social News Desk.

Within SND Campaigns, you have the ability to generate a performance report. It’s customizable – so you can highlight the parts that are doing the best and put aside the parts that don’t need to be showcased.

Show them how many posts have gone out, how many people it’s reached and which post performed the best.

Stop spending your spare time pulling this data from different places and trying to make it look good. We can generate these reports for you automatically. Simple, professional and a few clicks away.

Your client with love what you’ve done for them. You’ll love that SND did it for you.  

New to SND? Click here to line up a demo or to learn more about Social News Desk!

The post SND’s Client-Centric Reports with Customizable Metrics first appeared on Social News Desk.

SND Campaigns lets the ad ops team see every single client they’re managing…all on a single screen. It’s quick and easy to build ads and the live dashboard view means you can easily diagnose fulfilment issues and resolve any campaigns that aren’t meeting goals and expectations. That is…unless you like working in Facebook Ads Manager? Didn’t think so.

If you’re trying to scale up your in-house ad ops to hundreds of campaigns or even if you have a smaller client list and fewer resources… SND Campaigns is the easiest way to keep track of everything in one place.

New to SND? Click here to line up a demo or to learn more about Social News Desk!

The post SND’s One-of-a-Kind Ads Fulfillment Dashboard first appeared on Social News Desk.

Build, place and monitor your Branded Content ads through SND Campaigns. We make it easy. 

You don’t have to be an expert. We give you a simple and fast way to place ads – that perform better. You can avoid boosting posts. You don’t have to deal with Ads Manager or Creative Studio issues anymore. 

Other upsides – we support Dynamic Creative which lets you use multiple videos and images in a single ad, plus multiple variations of copy, to make sure you’re always delivering the best ad to the right person in your audience. And, we optimize your media and images to make sure they perform well on mobile screens. 

Basically, we cut out the guesswork and common frustrations.  

If you’re doing Branded Content posts organically, you’re able to track that within SND Campaigns too and automatically deliver a report to your sponsor. 

Or if you’re running Paid Branded Content along with Organic Branded Content – perfect. Our system is set up to make that a breeze. 

New to SND? Click here to line up a demo or to learn more about Social News Desk!

The post Use SND to Manage Organic & Paid Social Campaigns first appeared on Social News Desk.

The changes are far-reaching given that iOS14 is already running on about 72% of all iPhones (as of December 2020). But while these changes will have a significant impact on Conversion Campaigns, campaigns based on events that happen on Facebook – such as Reach and Traffic campaigns – won’t see much of a change.

This certainly isn’t great news for agencies and advertisers looking to measure results of Facebook ads. But there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Let me walk you through exactly what’s changed and offer a few solutions…

What Exactly is Happening?

Marketers have often relied on “28-day click-through” and “28-day view-through” to see exactly how well their Facebook Ads perform. These two attribution metrics tell you how many people took a certain action (click/buy or view) within 28 days of seeing and clicking the ad.

It works (or worked) because of Facebook’s pixel technology – which most advertisers have installed on their website. The pixel essentially matches up people who have seen the ad with people who took a certain action (click/buy or view).

BUT…with Apple’s new changes… the pixel will no longer be able to tell if the owner of the device saw an ad 28 days ago. The trail – if you will – will be hidden by iOs14 after 7 days.

This effectively eliminates Facebook’s ability to provide a “28-day click-through” or “28-day view-through” metric. So the company has eliminated both. Facebook is also eliminating the “7-day view-through” metric (even though Apple has not imposed any 7 day changes). Regardless, Facebook says, the new default will be “7-day click-through” and “1-day view-through” only.

What About My Facebook Pixel?

While the Facebook Pixel continues to be an important source of data for advertisers, the power of the pixel is certainly diminished in these changes. In addition to the eliminated attribution metrics, Facebook is now also limiting the Facebook Pixel to tracking just 8 events, and will only transmit one event per user. This means you won’t be able to follow users through the entire funnel – noting every single time they take any step toward a purchase. Instead, Facebook suggests you to prioritize events based on how important they are. You can adjust these settings in the “Edit Web Event Configurations” dashboard on Facebook. Set it up so that the most important event (such as a purchase or sign-up) will be the one transmitted to Facebook for measurement and optimization.

Example: If a user lands on your website, clicks a few pages, and then decides to add a subscription to their cart and purchase it, they would trigger several “events” during their visit. If you’re prioritizing your events from the top down from highest value to lowest, you might list them as Purchase, Add to Cart, and Landing Page View. A new paid subscriber would trigger all of these events. However, Facebook will only be able to report the event with the highest priority – in this case, the purchase.

TIP: Ad sets optimizing for an event beyond the 8 that are prioritized will be paused – so, be sure to review any current campaigns for event optimizations to ensure your ads continue to run as expected.

Will My Custom Audiences Still Work?

Yes and no. Because Facebook won’t allow you to track as many “events”… the size of your Custom Audience will naturally decrease. And if your Custom Audience is smaller, it may mean increased ad costs and reduced performance compared to historical campaigns.

However, there are still many other tools marketers can use in order to create Custom Audiences, such as existing customer email lists. If you need help crafting effective audiences, reach out to us for tips!

Now What?!

Stay calm. Realize that Facebook ads can still be incredibly effective. You’ll just have to start doing things a little differently.

1. Be sure your domains are verified in Facebook Business Manager. Many NEWSROOM sites already have this step completed to get the most out of their organic social posting. In order to configure pixel events (such as digital subscription purchase or email sign-up), this step is crucial.
2. Review your Facebook Pixel “events” and decide which are the highest priority. And beware – if you don’t review these in Events Manager yourself, Facebook will automatically prioritize what they see as the most important 8 events for you.
3. Set realistic expectations and be ready to adjust your benchmarks. Logic tells us you will get fewer conversions in 7 days than you were getting in 28 days. This doesn’t mean conversions aren’t still happening in days 8-28. It just means your data won’t include these results and thus -perceived cost per conversion will be higher.

TIP: You can export historical “28-day click-through” or “28-day view-through” data from Facebook. Use it to figure out what percentage of events were happening in days 8-28 and adjust reporting and expectations accordingly.

Social News Desk Can Help!

Don’t worry – we’ve got your back. And as Facebook Marketing Partners, we’ve got all the resources and information you need to make a smooth transition. We’re even looking at alternative ways to get the most audience data possible so that we can continue to deliver advertising solutions that get the best results. In fact, if you want a way to continue to track attribution beyond the “7-day click-through” metric … email us!

Need help with new best practices? Want to know how campaign performance is changing industry wide? Or how to set realistic expectations going forward? Ask us!

The post Breaking down the iOS 14 Changes – What Newsrooms need to know about the future of Facebook ads first appeared on Social News Desk.

The current guidance from Facebook is more recommendation than rule: “Avoid too much image text. We’ve found that images with less than 20% text perform better.”

Facebook defines “image text” as “any text that exists on your ad image or creative,” indicated by #3 in the example below.

While there’s no longer a hard and fast rule on image text, Facebook is still strongly recommending that most of the text stay in the body of the post rather than inside the image. We have a few more recommendations to make sure you’re getting the most out of your ads, without resorting to more image text:

• Less is more. Keep your post text short so it’s not cut off on any placements.
• Use headlines for important points. When you include a URL in your ad, you can customize the headline. Don’t leave it blank, this is great visual real estate!
• Include an emoji, if appropriate. Not every ad is emoji-friendly, but if the subject matter isn’t too serious, consider dropping an emoji in the headline and/or the post text. Every bit of color catches the eye!

Need help crafting an effective ad? Our team is trained and certified to make sure you’re spending your money effectively, and that starts with great creative. Get in touch with us at info@socialnewsdesk.com to learn how to get started.

The post Facebook’s “20% Rule” is No More first appeared on Social News Desk.

Social News Desk’s Head of Innovation, Apryl Pilolli, joined a panel of fellow journalists to discuss “Branded Content with a Purpose” including methods and tools for successful, creative cause- and community-marketing initiatives.

Top Tips:

1.) Add content & creative.
2.) Pick your goal.
3.) Choose your audience & budget.
4.) Review and Publish.

Once your campaign is live, you can monitor and document results of your campaigns quickly and easily for you and your sponsor(s).

If you’d like to learn more or set up a demo, please reach out to us at info@socialnewsdesk.com.

The post Branded Content With A Purpose first appeared on Social News Desk.

No matter if you are just getting started with branded content or a veteran in the space it is important to gain competitive insights. One great resource for that is CrowdTangle.

Since more than 2,000 U.S. local news organizations and 13,000 local journalists use CrowdTangle, I probably don’t need to tell you what it is, but did you know that it is a great resource to research what is happening in branded content space?

As its many users know, CrowdTangle is a social monitoring tool that Facebook offers free to newsrooms. It pulls public engagement data from social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit so that local media can use it for discovering stories, benchmarking performance and understanding audience.

However, a feature that isn’t as well known or publicized is its branded content capabilities. You can use the tool to see what types of branded content other news orgs are publishing and see who brands are partnering with. This is incredibility helpful to get ideas and prospect potential clients.

Here are a couple tips to help you leverage this resource:

• Just as you would for regular content setup lists and digests to look at and analyze what branded content your page and competitor pages are publishing. This can be a great way to get new ideas or to see what is performing well or not so well.
• Set up a branded content leaderboard to get an idea of how your content is performing compared to your competition. Pick some top performing competitors and study their branded content to refine your own strategy.
• Search for an advertiser’s Facebook page and see if they are already partnering with influencers and publishers and what types of content they are doing.

Once you’re up to speed with CrowdTangle, use Social News Desk’s RevStream to easily execute, manage and report on all your branded content campaigns. Pair these two tools together for the ultimate advantage in managing and monetizing your social inventory.

If you have questions or want to know more about branded content, please get in touch with your SND Client Success Manager or me at apilolli@socialnewsdesk.com.

The post Gain Competitive Insights about Branded Content with CrowdTangle first appeared on Social News Desk.

What is my social media audience really worth?

Sure, you’ve spent 10 years building up a huge following on Facebook and Twitter…but how do you turn that into dollars? The first step is figuring out what that audience is worth. And that’s where the SND RevStream pricing calculator comes in. Using your Page’s past performance as a guide, SND RevStream can calculate exactly what a future post should be worth to an advertiser.

How can I make this easy on my sales team?

Selling Branded Content posts on Facebook or Twitter is just like selling any other large audience. But unlike other forms of advertising, there’s a perception that social media is “unlimited” so it can be hard for Account Executives to sell. That’s where SND RevStream’s Inventory Management comes in. Use it to predetermine the number and type of social media posts your team is WILLING to sell per week, then – sell against that inventory. It removes friction between editorial and sales while also creating a system of supply and demand.

It’s Sold. Now What?

Getting repeat business will depend on your team’s ability to EXECUTE what gets sold. That’s where SND RevStream excels. Not only does the platform help you before the sale – but it’s a critical fulfillment tool as well. Sold inventory is tracked and managed as part of a campaign. And each campaign is visible on your SND Dashboard. Now you can see what’s been promised and instantly start filling the order from a single screen. Then, automatically generate reports to show the success of the posts.

Ready to Get Started?

It’s simple. Contact us to learn about our limited beta trial.

The post SND Launches First Branded Content Inventory Tool for Newsrooms first appeared on Social News Desk.

What does that mean, you ask? Facebook tells us it means organic reach is about to go down for all customers but post engagement will remain the same. …Let’s unpack that together shall we?.

Organic Reach

Prior to this change, Facebook had calculated “organic reach” by adding up each time a post was PLACED INTO a person’s News Feed – regardless of if the post actually appeared on the person’s screen. So that meant a post could queue up on a user’s News Feed – way at the bottom, let’s say – and even though the user didn’t actually scroll down far enough to see it, it still counted as “organic reach”. Well, the party’s over folks.

Starting now, “organic reach” will be defined the same way it is for paid ads on Facebook – meaning a user has to actually SEE the post. They call it “viewable impressions.”

To provide more consistency across reporting, we will now measure Page organic reach in a similar manner as how we count ads – meaning that we’ll only report organic reach based on viewable impressions, or for posts that enter a person’s screen.   ~Facebook Marketing Partner Team

And why has Facebook decided to do this now? Paid, branded and boosted posts have become such a huge part of the Facebook landscape, the company simply can’t keep organic and paid posts on two different measurement scales any longer. Branded Content is officially a core business model. And if you aren’t taking advantage of that opportunity, ask us how SND Campaigns can help.

Nothing’s really changing, just becoming more accurate

So yes, you are going to see your Reach numbers go down as the year progresses. But the silver lining is, it’s not because you’re actually reaching fewer eyes – it’s because the metric hasn’t really been honest with you up until now. Reach is going down because it’s being corrected.  This change won’t impact delivery of ads or organic content and the same number of real eyes will be seeing your real posts. That’s why, according to Facebook, your engagement rates will not fall.

This update will begin to roll globally to all pages in the week of February 12th (this week). You can find more details about it in this Facebook blog post from February 9th.

The post Important Changes to Facebook’s Organic Reach Metric first appeared on Social News Desk.