Facebook ads are generally the cheapest and most easily tracked form of online social media advertising. Plus, the ads are optimizable! And, this feature gives you a lot of control over your ads on the platform. Most importantly, you should have a successful plan to get results. Otherwise, you will be wasting your money!

In reality, businesses, big or small, use Facebook ads to increase their sales. Are you? If not, it’s time – Facebook has a wide range of targeting options, campaign types and great ad formats. 

So, let’s take a look at what Facebook Ad features can change the way you see advertising in 2020:

1. Carousel Ads

If you are looking for an engaging and fun way to promote your business, Facebook carousel ads are the best. 

This ad format allows you to show multiple images, videos, in the same ad unit, each with a call to action to your website’s page. When used wisely, this ad format can be used to highlight your products, features or promotion!

While Facebook carousel ads with images are effective at driving website traffic and boosting engagement, Facebook carousel ads with video offer you the creative side to leverage the most influential and engaging Facebook in-feed ad format. You can even create an appealing story with carousel ads.

2. Lead Ads

Facebook lead ads are a compelling addition to any Facebook ad campaign. They are best at working with the marketer’s golden rule: Know the audience. This form of ad allows you to gather user details from customers while offering them additional opportunities to connect through demo requests, newsletter subscriptions, contest registration, scheduled appointments and many more. 

When someone clicks on a lead ad, they’re presented with a lead ad form that’s almost already completed with information from the user’s Facebook profile. And the rest of the form can be completed in a few easy taps.

3. Video Ads

A lot of users watch videos on Facebook religiously. Videos are scroll-stopping, relatable and captivating. A good video can relate what a picture cannot! Sometimes it makes us emotional, and other times it entertains us. That’s why video ads are important.

Creating a Facebook video ad is the best way to ensure your audience notices your brand, remembers it and possibly converts to buyers in the future. Video ads help you to strengthen brand identity and increase engagement. You can also try your ideas in Facebook GIF ads which are just as dynamic as a regular video ad.

4. Engagement Ads

The Facebook algorithm is designed to allow engagement ads to reach the users who are more likely to react, like, comment, or share your stuff. It’s a great way for your business to get recognized and engaged with a wide range of potential customers!

Engagement ads are relevant because a lack of customer interaction may look like a post is unreliable or that a business is unapproachable. Potential customers are most likely to interact with posts that have more likes, comments and shares. So, the higher the engagements on your posts, the more likely it is that potential customers will interact with your business. 

5. The Facebook Pixel

You have to use Facebook pixel even before Facebook ads because it’s how you measure conversions. This is an analytical tool consisting of a code that you put on your website. This tool simply tracks site visitors and gathers their user behaviour details.

It works by placing cookies and triggering an event when a user interacts with your Facebook ads or website. Facebook pixel then collects data that helps you to track conversions from Facebook ads and then optimizes and builds targeted audiences for future ads. This collected data will be remarketed to users who have already taken some action on your website.

6. Behavioural Targeting

Are you looking to target people who are interested in your products or business?

Facebook’s behavioural targeting helps in that regard. It’s all about reaching potential customers based on their past purchase behaviour, device usage, travel preference (you may wonder why? but believe me, it’s an important metric), purchase intent and other purchase behavioural characteristics.

Facebook, with the help of third-party partners, uses collected data to figure out users’ behaviour both online and offline! Behavioural targeting will help your posts reach the right audience at the right time.

7. Interest Targeting

As the name implies, interest targeting allows your posts to reach your target audience based on their interests. Your post content may reach them based on their daily activities, hobbies, pages they have liked, or a whole set of other things!

Interest targeting is best when it comes to displaying your ads to people who are not even aware of you. With interest targeting, your ads reach people who are most likely to engage with them.

8. Demographic Targeting

Facebook offers demographic ad targeting options! You can target your audience based on their particular countries, states, cities, and suburbs. This option also allows you to exclude people from specific locations. 

Picking your target audience based on their area and age, language and gender is a pretty straight forward option. Remember, the results will be too narrow if you are selecting too many filter options to get to the target audience and may affect your ad campaign performance.

9. Website conversion campaigns

Facebook’s website conversion campaigns help you to grow your business. Website conversion is the best ad campaign to encourage potential customers to visit your website and do something on your page.

If your objective is to drive traffic, increase page visits and sales on your website, you should consider executing a website conversion campaign!

10. Remarketing

Facebook remarketing is a powerful ad campaign to engage with people who have already visited your website or Facebook page. This can be done by setting up Facebook custom audiences, so when a customer visits your website or specific landing page or performs a particular action on your website and leaves before completing the action, they are added to your retargeting list. 

People rarely buy something from a company the very first time they come across it. Retargeting them with your ads is an excellent way to build engagement and trust. 

It’s your time…

Facebook has many hidden gem features that are often deeply buried in their complicated interface. Finding and using these can take your campaign from good to extraordinary!

Follow these helpful tips Facebook Image size dimensions and ad feature guidelines, and in a short period of time, you’ll be on your way to running successful Facebook ads.

The post Top 10 Trending Facebook Advertising Features in 2020 appeared first on SiteProNews.

Orkut

Orkut, which was popularly used in India and Brazil, was launched early in 2004 – the same year that Facebook, now the world’s top social network platform, was founded. Orkut introduced life online before people really knew what “social networking” was.

 The app was designed to help users meet old and new friends online and manage existing relationships. The app’s shutdown came as Google’s social networking plans still remained in question. On June 30, 2014, Google officially announced that Orkut would be shutting down completely on September 30, 2014.

Google Buzz

Google Buzz was officially announced on February 9, 2010, as an all-in-all microblogging, messaging and social networking tool. Users could share photos, videos, links, comments and status messages formed in conversations and appear in the user’s inbox. 

The app raised a furor over privacy as many Gmail users were offended that their Gmail address books were converted into a public contact list, visible to everyone in their address books, in Buzz. On October 14, 2011, Google announced that it would stop the service and that the existing content on the app would be available in read-only mode.

Google +

Google+ sometimes called G+, was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks. 

One of the main reasons that Google+ shut down can be linked to the data breach that occurred on the app. Over 500,000 accounts had their private and personal data illegally shared without permission by a number of developers. 

Another reason for shutting down Google+ is because of the low number of users on the application. When it initially launched in 2011, people across the internet were already using Twitter and Facebook as their social media platforms with both receiving a rush in the number of users. This meant Google+ already had tight competition when it came to attracting new users to their platform.

On October 8, 2018, Google officially announced it would be ending Google+ in August 2019, later changing that date to April 2, 2019.

After the shutdown of several high-profile platforms, including Orkut, Google Buzz and Google+, and the shuttering of messaging services like Allo and Google Wave, the search engine giant is trying its hand again at social networking with its latest application called Shoelace.

The hyper-local social networking app, which arises from Google’s in-house incubator experimental Area 120 (Google’s product development workshop), is intended to help users  discover activities and people who are interested in that activity.

What’s up with the name Shoelace

If you are puzzled by the name “Shoelace,” for a social media app, Google has an answer for you – “The entire premise of Shoelace is to tie people together based on their interests like the purpose of laces on a shoe. We do so through activities, which are called ‘Loops”, says Google in the FAQ section of their official Shoelace website. 

Shoelace is unlike your regular social media networks such as Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. It encourages users to do something productive or participate in some real life activities, rather than connecting and engaging with others on the Web.

Shoelace works by listing your interests in the app, and enabling it to suggest a series of hand-picked likable local activities which it calls “Loops.” You can also organize your activities or events, and there’s a map interface to view and reply to other user’s Loops.

If you don’t have any of events to recommend, that’s okay too! Users can choose their interest in a variety of categories, which Shoelace will use to suggest a number of selected activities you might like so that you will never have an excuse to say there’s nothing fun to do.

Like any other social media platform, users will also be able to create profiles so that they can share some good stories about themselves, learn about others from their profile, and make it easier to coordinate and prepare for upcoming events. According to Shoelace’s listing on Google Play Store, a very recent update to the app includes the ability to share Loops using a hyperlink, something that could make it more manageable to share upcoming activities.

Shoelace’s first-launch comes just months after Google shut down its third-social network Google+, its most notable attempt at developing a social media platform. However, rather than working on building a new all-encompassing social network platform to emulate the likes of Instagram and Facebook, Shoelace seems to have much more modest objectives that aim for Facebook’s ubiquitous events functionality.

Schemer: Old wine, New bottle!

Android Police notes that Shoelace carries a remarkable resemblance to Schemer, another temporary experimental event organizing app from Google that launched in 2011. In Schemer, users could list things they wanted to do, share it with other users and mark it as done once they had achieved it. Unfortunately, the app had to shut down just three years later on January 10, 2014.

Anyway, as per Shoelace’s official website, the app is currently available in New York City right now. The site also notes that Shoelace is an excellent app for people who have newly moved to a city and don’t know many people there but are interested in meeting others. 

Also, Google is taking requests for recommendations on places it should launch Shoelace next. The developers working behind the app are planning to extend it to other cities across the United States, even though there is no fixed time-frame on when that might happen.

To sum up

Let’s hope that Google’s new social media platform will be with us for a long time! Even if Shoelace doesn’t make it, like the other Google social networks, Google will combine the algorithms and features with Google Maps or another future social networking attempt.

The post Meet Shoelace, Google’s Next Shot at Social Networking appeared first on SiteProNews.