FACEBOOK'S BEST-KEPT ADVERTISING SECRET

Whitepaper

FACEBOOK’S BEST-KEPT ADVERTISING SECRET How to amplify earned media through Domain Sponsored Stories

Which of the two news feed stories would you be more likely to click on ?

#1

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2013, All Rights Reserved

#2

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If you’re like most people, you clicked on the one shared by Sean Parker. REALLY HIGH CTR: 1.285%

INSANELY HIGH CTR: 9.679%

SPONSORED OR PROMOTED POST

DOMAIN SPONSORED STORY

FACT: People are more likely to click on stories that are shared by their friends or people they subscribe to.

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DOMAIN SPONSORED STORIES (the ad that’s not really an ad at all)

Shared by someone famous! Personal Commentary

Content from your website Social context

What is a Domain Sponsored Story? A Domain Sponsored Story is an organic share of a link, by a Facebook user, that you as an advertiser pay to have appear in that user’s friends and subscribers’ News Feeds. Domain Sponsored Stories see a high click-through-rate because they are organically shared content just amplified to reach a larger audience.

What makes Domain Sponsored Stories unique? Whereas the Sponsored Story that you’re likely familiar with amplifies activity (likes, comments, & shares) related to your Facebook Page, Domain Sponsored Stories amplify activity related to your domain. Domain Sponsored Stories allow you to amplify activity about your brand, even if that happens outside of your Facebook Page.

Anytime someone shares a link from your website, it is eligible for you to sponsor into the News Feeds of their friends and/or subscribers. ©


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PAID

OWNED YOUR WEBSITE

ORGANIC SHARES OF YOUR CONTENT

EARNED

DOMAIN SPONSORED STORIES

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HOW CAN I MAKE ADS LIKE THIS?

STEP #1: CREATE A FACEBOOK APP FOR YOUR WEBSITE. It’s easier than it sounds. Get started at developers.facebook.com/apps

STEP #2: CREATE A FACEBOOK AD FOR YOUR DOMAIN.

Select your domain (Not your page)

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HOW CAN I MAKE ADS LIKE THIS?

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STEP #3: LET ‘ER RIP. Depending on how many people share links from your domain, the available inventory will vary – stories about your domain are only eligible to be sponsored for 7 days after the story is created.

STEP #4: SEED SHARABLE CONTENT. Of course, there won’t be any stories to sponsor if people aren’t seeing and sharing your content to begin with. Optimizing your owned media (Facebook Pages) is essential if you want to drive people to your website to share.

The graph above shows the Organic Reach of 9 different posts from the same Facebook Page. The post represented by the grey line reached 68,768 people within the first 15 minutes of being published. By comparison, the post represented by the red line reached just 9,159 people. That’s a difference of 700%. Organic Reach is highly variable, so make sure you’re paying attention.

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ADVANCED TIPS & TRICKS

Remember, you can’t filter negative vs. positive commentary about your domain. If someone shares a link to your domain but has something bad to say, there’s no way to ensure that you’re not paying to promote this. This makes Domain Sponsored Stories less ideal for huge brands, but fantastic for publications and content marketers, where negative comments are less of a focus. If you really want to get clever, you can create a separate app ID for a subdomain, like blog.yourdomain. com – this way, you’re only sponsoring the stories about blog.yourdomain.com, and exclude stories about the top-level-domain (yourdomain.com)

When a Facebook user with subscribers makes a public post about your domain, this story is eligible to be sponsored. This means that if someone famous shares a link to your domain, you can amplify this to their entire audience (or a subset, defined by targeting parameters). For instance, in our Sean Parker example, Sean shared a link to our website, and we sponsored his post to reach only the people who subscribe to him and are interested in Facebook marketing & advertising.

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ABOUT Unified is an award-winning enterprise marketing technology company for activating social audiences and impacting consumer actions. Unified’s cloudbased Social Operating Platform and marketing applications are used by over 400 brands, including Global 2000 enterprises and their advertising agencies. Founded in April 2011, UNIFIED has offices in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.

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