Facebook’s newest ads are called Sponsored stories and they can be very effective in marketing your brand. You can advertise specific Facebook activities such as individual posts (a Sponsored post story), likes of your Page (Sponsored like story), or check-ins with Facebook Places (Sponsored check-in story). The Sponsored story is then shown to a Facebook user’s Friends. Sponsored stories currently aren’t widely used, and some debate exists about their effectiveness.
Facebook recently changed the Sponsored Story Ad creation so that Sponsored like stories and Sponsored check-in stories are automatically enabled when you advertise your Page or your Place. Now the only separate Sponsored Story you can advertise is a Sponsored post story.
You can use Sponsored stories for Facebook Pages and apps, and to advertise when someone checks in to your Place. The idea behind the ads is that they show when someone likes your Page, using your app, or checking into your Place, thereby giving you social proof. But people are questioning whether social proof is enough to move someone to act without the call to action in the copy.
The ads look different from a traditional Facebook Ad because there is no text in the body of the ad for a Sponsored like story. In a Sponsored post story, the text of the ad is determined by the Page post. Also note that for Sponsored post story ads, you get added information about the post in the ad, such as the likes, shares, and number of comments.
To use the Sponsored stories feature for a Page post story, follow these steps:
Log in to Facebook as your personal Profile.
Go to www.facebook.com/ads/create to get to the ad-creation screen.
You can type this URL in the browser after you’ve logged in, or you can open a new window and go to this website. You see the Set Up Your Ad or Sponsored Story page.
From the list, select the Page or app that you want to advertise.
If your page doesn’t appear in the list, enter the URL of your Page in the URL field.
In the What Would You Like to Do? section, select the Promote Page Post radio button.
The ad is set to promote the most recent post, but you can change that setting. You can also select the optional Keep my Ad Up-to-date by Automatically Promoting my Most Recent Post box.
Select the post you would like to promote from the drop-down menu.
You see the preview of the ad on the right side of the page. Facebook also automatically creates a Sponsored News Feed Story about people liking, commenting on, or sharing this post. Uncheck these options if desired but more people may see your ad in the News Feed rather than in the areas where Ads normally appear.
Create your Page post with the ad in mind before you create it. Also note that you can create a Sponsored post story from a Facebook Question (thus creating a mini poll within the ad), or you can create an ad from a post of a YouTube video, which can be very engaging.
A carefully crafted Facebook Page sponsored post story sometimes gets better results than a Facebook Ad. Because you can do unique things with a Facebook Page sponsored post story, such as show a Facebook Question or a YouTube video, you may want to experiment with ways to make Sponsored stories work for you.