For Web content Publishers (like us) Facebook is great medium which offers large audience and exposure. However, one of the major problems that most publishers face is that the content they share is not seen by relevant audiences, thereby bringing down engagement and reducing effectiveness.
Also, more often than not Facebook’s algorithm are unable to show relevant content to users. Their algorithms are mostly based on communication and interaction between the users (and brands) rather than the topic or relevance. This has been a major drawback for publishers.
Facebook wants to change this, and hence they have now launched a new feature that allows publishers to do Audience Optimization.
Audience Optimization helps in 3 different areas:
- Preferred audience – Allows publishers to add interest tags to content to help Facebook connect people with the topics and subtopics that are most likely to engage them. Rather than limit the audience that sees a post in News Feed, these tags prioritize, uniquely for each person, the topics that are most likely to interest them.
- Audience restrictions – Gives publishers the option to limit the visibility of certain posts across Facebook by specifying which audiences would not find a post relevant, based on their location, language, age or gender. This is an existing feature that can be used alongside preferred audience options.
- Audience insights – Gives publishers visibility into the performance of their content, down to the post level with breakdowns by interest tag. This is in addition to the existing Page insights product. Once a post is published, insights for the preferred audience can help publishers understand how different subsets of people are responding by showing reach and engagement metrics for each interest tag.
As a content publishers ourselves, this is a great step forward by Facebook. The Audience optimization tool will definitely help users see the content that is most relevant to them and at the same time help publisher target the audience they want to increase engagement.
Over last few months, Facebook said that they have carried out beta testing with some major publishers like Bleacher Report, The New York Times, MTV among others and Publisher feedback has been very positive. Most of them have witnessed increased engagement of Facebook.
We can’t wait to try out the new Audience targeting and Optimization tool. We will update this post, when we have tried it ourselves!
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