Understanding the Friend Aspect of Social Advertising

Let’s say that you’re spending a normal day online and are opening up your mailbox to see what’s in there. Now, when you see you have 26 new messages, you inevitably look at two things: The subject of the message and the sender of the message. Inevitably, most people are going to be a lot more hesitant to open up a message from an unknown sender, regardless of how enticing the message is. There’s simply no trust there. The same holds true with ads on Facebook. There needs to be trust there before most people are going to click on it.

You have to face the facts of the Internet here. Online advertising isn’t something new. Facebook users are well aware of the many different ad types out there; they know when they’re looking at an ad, because they’re bombarded with ads every single day. So when it comes right down to it, a Facebook user is obviously far more likely to check out some material from their friends before they’re going to check out and click a banner ad you’re throwing out there in the ether.

If you can understand this, you can work within the social context of Facebook and ultimately begin to revise your campaigns so that they pick up momentum from sharing and liking.

Why Friends Really Trust Friends on Facebook

To understand fully why friends are exceedingly more trusting of other friends on Facebook, you first have to realize what Facebook users are there to do. What they’re not there to do, just as importantly, is to click on random ads.

Facebook users want to:

• Update their profiles
• Check their friends’ profiles
• Join and browse groups
• Like/dislike different social media materials
• Tag and share
• Watch and post different videos
• Avoid anything unknown

The personal aspect of a social network is still quite important. The truth is that people stick to their tribes. What they spend time on has to be accepted by this tribe, by and large, and thus you will find very few users willing to branch out on their own to check out your ads.

However, people are still different when it boils down to it. So while you might not have a stampede of individuals looking to check out your ad or fan page, etc, you’re still going to get some people within your niche to check it out. And if you’re playing to the social context of the network, this person will like the ad, share it with their friends, and their friends become more likely to do the same. It’s a snowball effect that you’re after. The hardest part is gathering enough snow to form a ball in the first place.

Author bio: This article is compiled by Craig Robinson, Editor-in-chief at the Facebook Ad manager tool Qwaya. Besides writing about social advertisement, Craig also covers topics within online consumer behavior and tips for Facebook marketing strategies.