Facebook has launched a new tool for targeting organic posts to your desired audience. Audience Optimization is said to help make posts more relevant in people’s news feeds through being shown to Facebook users who are most likely to engage with them.
When constructing a Facebook post there will soon be an option to add interest tags. Facebook will then use that information to prioritize the content in the news feeds of people who are interested in that topic.
The company points out that there is a distinct difference between Audience Optimization and the existing Interest Targeting feature because it doesn’t restrict a post’s reach (unless you want it to).
With that being said, you can exclude sub-sections of your audience from seeing certain posts if that’s how you want to target them. For example, if you’re going to publish something that would only be relevant to your local area, you can exclude non-locals from seeing it. In addition to location, you can also restrict posts based on language, age, or gender.
With these features come new audience insight capabilities. When assessing the performance of a post, you can drill down how well it was seen by your target audience with breakdowns of total reach by interest tag.
The new data you can gain from the reach and engagements metrics for each interest tag could help you better target future posts. In addition, it could help you identify segments of your audience you might not otherwise have thought was likely to engage with a particular type of post.
“The variety and amount of content available to people is growing, so having more information about who is likely to be interested in your content helps us get your posts to the people who will care about them most.”
Page owners, keep in mind that you will have to enable the tool before you have access to it. This can be done through the following steps:
- Go to your Page.
- Click ‘Settings’ in the top right hand corner.
- Click ‘General’ in the tab column on the left side of the page.
- Find the row labeled ‘Audience Optimization for Posts’ in the middle of the page and click ‘Edit.’.
- Check off the box that that allows you to begin using the feature.
Audience Optimization will soon be available English language pages through the page post composer, graph API, third-party publishing tools, and Instant Articles.
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