I’ll admit that it’s taken me some time to wrap my head around Facebook advertising. It can seem complicated and downright confusing.

What I’ve found, though, is that the benefits of promoting your business on Facebook are so fantastic that it’s worth taking some time to learn about it.

At first, I was skeptical about Facebook being a good place to advertise my product creation business to begin with. Then, in November’s Product Creator Newsletter, my friends Shane Johnston and Ryan Skelly shared these facts with me:

• People spend more time on social media than any other major Internet activity, including email.
• Compared to other social media platforms, people spend 83% of their time on Facebook.
• Facebook has 728 million daily active users and 874 million mobile active users.
• According to Facebook’s Q3 Investors Report, revenues for the third quarter alone amounted to $2.02 billion, which was up 41% from the previous quarter & 65% year over year.

Those are some staggering statistics!

From here, it only made sense to leverage this 800-lb. gorilla to promote my business.

If you’re going to use ONE type of Facebook ad right now, Sponsored Stories are a great place to start. You’ve probably already seen ads like this in your News Feed:

This is a Sponsored Story that I ran recently on my Fan Page. It’s simply a page post that I added an extra option to: Whenever one of my fans engages with that post in some way (they either “like” it, comment on it, or share it), that engagement shows up in their friends’ News Feeds.

Here’s what I love about Sponsored Stories in particular:

They’re great for social proof—which is extremely effective.
Statistics show that 70% of consumers trust brand recommendations from friends, and 80% of consumers say that they are more likely to try something new when it is suggested by a friend in social media. With Sponsored Stories , that’s is essentially what you are doing—showing people that a friend of theirs follows you and is interested enough in your content to engage with youis interested in you, so maybe they would benefit from your content as well.

They’re incredibly easy to create.
You have two easy options for generating Sponsored Stories:

1. Use the basic Facebook Ads Manager. This is the simplest way to create a Sponsored Story, with no additional features or tracking.

   How to use it:

   • Create a page post on your business page.
   • Once it appears on your page, simply click the “Promote” link under the post.

2. Use the Facebook Power Editor. The Power Editor is a free browser plugin for Chrome that gives you more control over your ads, allowing you to target custom audiences, monitor ad stats, bulk-edit your campaigns, and much more.

   How to use it:

   • Install the Power Editor plugin.
   • Within the Power Editor, under “Type,” select “Sponsored Story.”
   • Under “About a Page or Place,” choose any of the three options available (I like to start with “People liking your Page.”
   • Choose the page post you want to turn into a Sponsored Story.

They won’t be around forever!
Due to a change in Facebook’s advertising policies, the Sponsored Stories option will officially be eliminated from the site on April 9th. I recommend reaping the rewards while you still can! I’ll be sure to stay on top of whatever replaces it so we can both take advantage of that as well. 🙂

Sponsored Stories are the perfect way to start leveraging the enormous power of Facebook. I’m already seeing the benefits of putting out my own Sponsored Stories! Follow my lead and take advantage of this easy feature to draw more people to your page, get more engagement, and create new connections.

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