13 Facebook tactics to grow your audience

I’m at the Global Editors Network Summit in Lisbon. Here are my notes from a Facebook-led workshop. It was by far the most practical Facebook workshop I’ve attended. There are some really good ideas to help publishers grow audiences. Or as Jon Heaton, who is based in London and leads the Facebook EMEA Media Partner Engineering team, put it these are “12 tactics or ideas you can use to test, measure and learn”.
I’ve adapted the wording and added my own tips and notes and expanded Jon’s 12 points into 13.
If you only read one point in this list, make it the first. This is something I have been highlighting to colleagues at Condé Nast International since the Facebook algorithm change was announced at the start of this year (and one I’ve bugged Jon about previously).
1. Measure page shares vs friend shares
First things first, what is a Facebook share? A Facebook share is the total count of the number of times a URL – and therefore an article – is posted to Facebook. A share happens in two ways:
- When a brand page posts a link and people share that post;
- When a reader finds the link to a story (perhaps from email / Twitter / a messaging app) and posts it to her Facebook feed).
Since the major algorithm change announced in January, the second type of share has become particularly important as this is about organic sharing between friends, an action Facebook promotes. Brand shares have become more challenging since the algorithm change.
But how do you measure the two? How do you see if a particular news story has more page shares or more friend shares? Facebook doesn’t make this easy. (I suggested in the Q&A that Facebook looks at creating a tool for this.)
To use an example I shared with colleagues recently, this Vogue.com post has had 935 page shares.

UPDATE + CORRECTION, 13 June 2018
I initially reported that the overall friend shares for this article was more than 43,000 shares, based on adding the URL to the graph.facebook URL. (Here’s the documentation on the Graph API.)

Here’s the example:
But the somewhat confusingly titled ‘share_count’ actually includes all engagements (reactions, comments and shares).
I’ve since exchanged emails with Facebook and here is how you look at shares. This uses Graph API v3.
You’ll need to click ‘Get Token’ check one of the options and authorise using your own Facebook profile.

You need to have ?id= before the URL and &fields=engagement at the end of the URL. For example:
?id=https://www.vogue.com/article/see-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-official-wedding-portraits&fields=engagement
This shows that the total share count is 997 (+ 41,677 reactions + 743 comments).

If you want to work out how many shares are from readers sharing organically as opposed to the page, you then subtract the number of page shares from the total shares number.
You would think that in this case it would be 997 minus 935.
But this story was posted to Facebook several times by Vogue.com. By going to the article, using the CrowdTangle browser extension (free and available to all), I can see that the Vogue page and the Vogue Runway page have posted this story 6 times.

So I have to click through to the 6 Facebook posts to look at the total shares from page actions and then take that number away from 997. Like I say, I suggested that Facebook makes this easier!
So this story has had a low number of reader shares, I high number of page shares.
Another example is this delightful story from the New York Times. This has 1.1 million Facebook interactions.
The API shows this story has had 141,825 Facebook shares.

Using the CrowdTangle browser extension the NY Times page post had 61,088 shares. So the majority of shares came from reader shares (which includes several large pages sharing the story)

2. Use UTM tracking to track traffic from the page vs traffic from friend shares
Jon also pointed out that to measure Facebook traffic from page shares vs friend shares publishers can use UTM parameters (or mod tags) and then segment in Google Analytics or Omniture. For example, a site may adda tage that would look something like this to the end of each URL posted to the Facebook page. https://www.example.com?utm_source=Facebookpage
This then requires some double checking in GA or Omniture as a reader may copy a link including the UTM parameter from Facebook and share on Twitter, for example. That would then appear as Facebook traffic. The solution is to check that all the traffic for that UTM parameter has Facebook as a source in GA / Omiture.
3. If a large % of shares are from friend shares, optimise your share plugins
As mentioned above, friend shares have become increasingly important since the change of the algorithm. Jon’s advice on optimising for friend shares is to focus on the share plugins, the buttons on your site that readers click on to share to Facebook.
“If most shares are coming from friend shares, this is what your content should be focusing on,” he said.
Following his ‘measure, test, learn’ guidance, he suggested trialling whether share buttons are most effective at the top of articles, at the bottom of articles or if the site should adopt large buttons that are fixed and always in view (Buzzfeed uses this approach).
He also suggested testing the share quote plugin, an underused Facebook feature that allows readers to share a quote.
4. Work out your Facebook metrics
How is your news organisation measuring Facebook performance? Jon suggested getting granular beyond reach. For example, if you want to attract new audiences, you should analyse what new readers consume. You can do this by studying the consumption habits of fans of the page versus non-fans. Again, this is measured by the Graph API, by using post_engaged_fan. With these insights, you can then work out what type of posts reach new audiences – and commission more of these stories.
5. Facebook pixel is not just for ads
Facebook pixel allows sites to track user journeys. As Jon explained, pixel tracks cross-platform and cross-device journeys as people (i.e. Facebook users) are tracked rather than cookies.
You might want to track how people engage with a button or a respond to a call to action like a newsletter signup, he suggested.
He shared this link for auditing pixel integration and this link to help in pixel set up.
6. Use Facebook Analytics
Facebook Analytics (not the same as the Facebook Page Insights) helps sites understand how people interact with content across Facebook and owned and operated sites and apps.
Facebook Analytics can answer questions such as “do people who follow us on Facebook spend more time on site?”
Publishers can also use Facebook Analytics to analyse multiple Facebook pages and look at how many people follow more than one of a publisher’s pages. Jon explained that you do this by pulling in event channels (maybe a Messenger bot, maybe multiple pages) and once in view, you can then use the overlap functionality to look at how many users follow more than one page. (More on analysing your audience across channels here.)
7. Look for missed opportunities
In order to grow, you can use the Graph API to discover articles that are over-performing in terms of friend shares that haven’t yet been published to your page, Jon said. (At Vogue International we do this using PublishCheck, an analytics tool.)
8. Ensure you have optimised OG tags
I haven’t written about optimising for Facebook’s Open Graph tags since 2014. As Jon pointed out, if OG tags are not set – i.e. if you have not told Facebook which part of a web page contains the title / headline, it will likely pull the incorrect information or image into the share post.
Jon also pointed out that you can force a re-scrape. Again, it’s been four years since I blogged about the Facebook debugger.
9. ‘Don’t hold onto assumptions that aren’t backed by data’
Jon’s next tip was to “measure, test and change one variable at a time”. For example, posting more, might increase reach, Jon said.
10. ‘Use CrowdTangle as a recommended content engine’
CrowdTangle, a previously paid-for tool ($500 a month, from memory), was acquired by Facebook in 2016 and is now free for publishers to use.
I won’t write a long guide here as there are great resources online, but know that it is a powerful content discovery and social monitoring tool. It can support your editorial planning and you can use it to run data analysis post publication.
11. Note the potential traffic lift of adopting Facebook Instant Articles
Discussing this tactic, Jon shared some interesting data points. “News Feed offers on average over 3,500 stories a day per person,” he said.
IA was launched as a response to a poor user experience. If a Facebook user clicks to read a story and the web page is slow to load, she will likely click away. Facebook solved this by launching fast-loading reading experiences.
The “read lift” is most increased in countries with slow page-load speeds. For, example, India has a 75% read lift for IA.
“There’s a high correlation between network latency and uplift,” Jon explained.
Here’s the slide with stats:

12. Facebook has various options for subscription publications
Jon shared four tips for publishers with paywalls.
The first option is paid media (i.e. advertising on Facebook) to promote the new organisation’s paywall offer.
“You can precisely target readers at all parts of the funnel,” he said. You can “use Custom Audiences to either remove current subscribers from targeting or target them specifically.“
The second option is using Instant Articles. “40% of link clicks from News Feed are in the IA format.” Jon said. (Another interesting stats!)
The third option for subscriber publications to consider if call-to-action options (CTA). Facebook has served over 10 million email opt-ins across publishers, Jon said.
Facebook also has an Instant Articles product for subscriber publications, currently in alpha. This is aimed at allowing publishers with metered and freemium pay models to grow subscriptions. The publisher owns the pricing, data and customer relationship, Jon said.
Facebook is “still in the learning and testing phase”, testing inline vs interstitial ads, for example.
13. Use Facebook for newsletter signups
Jon pointed out that Facebook has three acquisition tools for newsletter signups.
A call to action within Instant Articles
The Huffington Post uses the CTAs within IA, for example. “29% of email signups are from this channel,” Jon said.
Paid media using lead ads
Facebook login on owned and operated sites and apps
The Boston Globe used this functionality, allowing readers to use their Facebook login to sign up to an email.