When done right, Facebook advertizing can be quite profitable. But it requires you to promote a good offer and to target the right audience. Unfortunately,many people find that (1) it’s hard to figure out what is going to sell and (2) what the best audience for it is. That’s why Sam Bakker and his partner, Brad Stephens have spent the last few months finding a way to solve these two problems. Their answer is Audience Drill, which lets you not only search for what your competition is posting on Facebook. In addition, it shows you the right audience to target for your offers. Audience... [...]

Joe Chernov says, “Last week, Facebook made a big announcement: the release of their new Instant Articles feature. It allows publishers to create and distribute mixed-media articles in a self-contained Facebook “capsule,” while promising mobile app users a more visually interesting reading experience that loads significantly faster that articles have previously. In response, my HubSpot colleague Kipp Bodnar wrote a blog post concluding that Instant Articles is bad for marketers. But I think he’s missing the point. There’s a whole other aspect of the debate... [...]

JP Mangalindan says, “Facebook said on Monday it could let businesses interact with users of WhatsApp, the popular messaging service it purchased for $21.8 billion last year. “We think that enabling that B2C [business-to-consumer] messaging has good business potential for us,” Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner explained on Monday at a tech conference in Boston. “As we learn those things, I think there’s going to be opportunities to bring some of those things to WhatsApp, but that’s more longer term.” The news was first reported by Bloomberg on Monday. A Facebook... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Near the end of his town hall Q&A Thursday, a small business owner asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg the question that marketers keep asking: “Given the decline in organic reach, how should businesses like ours or any business think about the role of Pages?” Zuckerberg gave the answer that Facebook keeps giving, saying that it continually adjusts the News Feed algorithm to make sure people see the posts they are interested in seeing and that because some people prefer not to see commercial messages, business Pages aren’t reaching as many people as they once... [...]

Amanda Subley says, “As a marketer, you know by now that most (if not all) of your potential customers are likely a part of Facebook’s massive community. There are 890 million people signing into Facebook every single day. So, whether your target audience is college students or CEOs, they’re probably using Facebook — and some of them are using it daily. The trouble is, posting on Facebook alone isn’t enough anymore for most brands, especially for those just starting out. Throwing money at Facebook to drive people to your page and sending them to your website... [...]

JP Mangalindan says, “Facebook’s 1.44 billion users create hundreds of thousands of events on the service every single day. Those events range from small, private dinner parties to Burning Man-themed ragers with guest lists in the hundreds. As Facebook continues to grow in size and influence, its Events team — a group of 30 or so employees, including three data analysts — continues to experiment with new features and tweak current ones to enhance the ways users interact with one another and ultimately keep folks engaged with the social network for longer periods“. Exclusive:... [...]

Jillian D’onfro says, “As more brands move their money to mobile advertising, Facebook has continued to shine above the rest of the market. The company drove one-third of all US digital ad growth for the fifth straight quarter in Q1, Morgan Stanley analysts write in a note, and Facebook’s business is accelerating while overall ad growth in the market is slowing. “Facebook – with its still-low pricing, industry leading reach and cross-platform targeting – is the main beneficiary and driver of the continued movement of ad dollars onto mobile,” Morgan Stanley... [...]

Brad Jefferson says, “There are more than one billion video views on Facebook every day. In the next five years, “most of [the social network] will be video,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a town hall meeting last November. The numbers seem to back up Zuckerberg’s prediction. The amount of video posted from people and brands to Facebook’s News Feed increased 260% year-over-year, Facebook recently reported. Odds are that you don’t need stats to prove video is exploding on Facebook, however. Just scroll through your own News Feed. Video is everywhere“. 4... [...]

Danny Sullivan says, “Today, Facebook announced Instant Articles, a way for publishers to post stories directly on Facebook. We’ve known this would be coming, and there’s been somedebate over whether it’s good or bad. But I haven’t seen that extended to what would happen if Google follows Facebook’s lead. It could, potentially causing the web to be swallowed up by two gatekeeping giants. Introducing Google Instant Results Allow me to demonstrate how easily Google could mimic Facebook. Here’s the top part of Facebook’s press release announcing the move. All I’ve done is... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “Facebook is an important source of traffic for many companies, including online publishers. And a new search engine Facebook is testing in its iOS mobile app could enable the world’s largest social network to generate even more referrals for third parties. As reported by TechCrunch, some users are seeing a new “Add a Link” button when they post status updates. When clicked, this button allows users to enter a search query and displays relevant links that Facebook thinks the user might want to share. While it’s not obvious how exactly Facebook... [...]