Another Facebook marketing option is a Sponsored story. Much like Facebook Ads, the Sponsored Story targets your potential clients by content from your fan page. However, with Sponsored Stories, you are using one of your fans to promote your business.
Sponsored Stories allow you to publicize through a Facebook Ad, your fans’ interactions with your page. So if Jon Smith “likes” your fan page, you can place a Sponsored Stories ad and it will appear on the right hand side of Facebook page for all of Jon Smith’s friends to see. Bonus if Jon Smith has 5,000 friends. As most of us know, Facebook often limits and decides the content that shows up in your fans’ news feed. This means that if your fans aren’t interacting with your page on a regular basis, they may not be seeing your posts. The Sponsored Story puts your business squarely where you want it to be: Back on your fans’ profiles.
There are four different kinds of Sponsored Stories.
The first is the “page like.” It requires little effort on your part (it literally just publicizes that ‘so-and-so “likes” your fan page’) and will be published only to friends of the person used for that ad.
Next is “app interactions.” It allows you to publicize app interactions, such as events, and will be visible to friends of the person who initially posted through the app.
Then we have “place check-ins.” It allows you to publicize when a popular fan “checks-in” to your store location. It will be visible only to friends of the fan used for the story.
Last is “page posts.” It also requires little effort from you and posts only to the person used in the ad. However, it will usually be a longer ad, allowing you to publicize positive comments left on your page. It will be published to everyone who has “liked” your page.
Sponsored Stories are a simple way to use Facebook Ads to market to the friends of your current fans/customers. As we said before, Facebook claims that if a user sees a friend’s name in an ad on Facebook, they are 68% more likely to remember the ad and twice as likely to remember the brand. So, let your fans sell your product for you by using Sponsored Stories!
