Facebook Dark Posts: Why Every Small Business Owner Should Be Using Them

Facebook cares about the same thing you do.

In fact, Facebook’s entire strategy, the core of its mission, and the motivation behind every single algorithm change or new feature, revolves around this:

CUSTOMERS.

You care about customers because you want to solve their problems.

You want to provide the answers to their questions. You want to meet their needs and make them feel good about doing business with you.

Facebook cares about the same thing.

Facebook’s cash cow is the attention of their users. If people get bored, offended, or overwhelmed, they’ll just leave. And if a user’s eyeballs aren’t browsing through the newsfeed, Facebook doesn’t make a dime.

That sounds bluntly capitalist, but Facebook is a business and so are you. At the end of the day you have to keep your business running, and without paying customers, everything grinds to a halt.

Facebook’s modus operandi is to create an engaging experience that provides users exactly what they want to see. Whether it’s a status update on the engagement of a friend, what their coworkers ate for lunch, their daughter’s endless selfies, or content from brands they know, like, and trust.

Believe it or not, Facebook isn’t trying to make marketing your product difficult. Facebook is protecting your customers better than you can while handing you the tools to reach your audience more effectively than ever. 

“Believe it or not, Facebook is protecting your customers better than you can.” (Click to tweet)

Introducing, the Facebook dark post (aka “unpublished posts”).

WHAT IS IT?

A Facebook dark post is a piece of content that doesn’t publish to your page’s timeline, but is visible to targeted audiences in the newsfeed. 

It looks like a normal status update, but functions like an ad.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

 1) Target Specific Audiences

Stop wasting your marketing budget on reaching people who aren’t going to care about your content. Dark posts allow you to tailor the audience that sees the post to match your target market.

2) Share Diverse Content

Odds are you have more than one customer profile. Even if you’re in a niche, your customers are very different types of people.

This means a single post can’t relate to your entire customer base. Facebook Dark posts allow you to target micro segments of your audience based on demographics and interests. 

A single post can’t relate to all of your customers. Lucky for you, Facebook can help. (Click to tweet)

3) Keep Your Fans Happy

Just because a customer likes your Facebook page doesn’t mean they want to see every post you publish. That could get annoying real quick.

Facebook dark posts enable you to promote your business without overwhelming your most loyal fans by keeping their newsfeed uncluttered.

4) Split-Test Content

Sometimes a small tweak to the headline or copy is all it takes to see a spike in reach.

With Facebook dark posts you can create an A/B test, and Facebook’s algorithm determines the best ad to display based on performance (which saves you money).

5) Discover New Prospects

Every business wants more customers.

Instead of a sidebar ad, Facebook dark posts look like normal status updates in the newsfeed and provide you the opportunity to target new customers that never knew you existed.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

To create, publish, and track dark posts you’ll need Power Editor. Facebook has a great FAQ with a lot of details about Power Editor that would be redundant for us to repeat here.

But here are the basics:

CREATE A FACEBOOK DARK POST

1) Open Power Editor.

2) From the Manage Pages screen, select the page you want to create a dark post for.

3) Click the “Create Post” button.

4) Select your post type (Link, Photo, Video, Status, Offer) and complete the required fields.

(Note: Ensure “This post will only be used as an ad” is selected.)

5) Click “Create Post” when finished.

Your newly created dark post should display on the list with a moon icon.

Conclusion

After you create the dark post, you’ll need to create a campaign and an ad. Social Media Examiner has a complete how-to guide that shows you exactly how to do this.

Pro Tip: Use Facebook dark posts to promote your blog content instead of simply driving traffic to your homepage. If you need help writing blog content that converts readers into customers, click here. 

Are you using Facebook dark posts to drive traffic to your blog content? (Click to tweet)

Try creating a dark post today and compare the results to a traditional post on your page. We bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the metrics.

This post was originally written by KC Procter on the Sweet Fish Blog.