Free and Paid.
You have probably heard that Facebook advertising is seen by some users as intrusive or annoying, but used effectively, it can be helpful in building a your follower base and finding users who will benefit from your page. Targeted advertising allows you to specify age and location ranges and easily find constituents who might want to follow your page. Here are further examples of targeting features you might not be aware of and some examples of how they can be used locally.
Get messages to your employees - Free
LinkedIn has just launched a function to notify all employees when you post on a corporate page. This is a great way to inform employees of public notices.
Restrict to a suburb - Free
When you post on Facebook there is the function to restrict the audience. This means that ONLY people within your defined demographic will see the post on their feed.
As an example, imagine that Power and Water wanted to notify people in Zuccoli that the water in their area had discoloration. This post on page could only be accessed when people where physically in Zuccoli (according to their GPS or Internet location), and would not cause unnecessary concern for people outside of this suburb.
Target Buildings - Paid
Ever wanted to get a message to people in Parliament House, Paspaley building or Mitchell Centre? With some clever use of the geo targeting feature, you can send a Facebook Ad to users within a particular building, tailoring your message for a very specific audience.
Target visitors who physically attend a location - Paid
Location targeting means that shop owners can send ads to people who have physically been to their shop. When connected to the point of sale system it can determine if they made a purchase or not, and send extra details to encourage them to buy online or visit the store for a deal they might have missed.
For NT Government, this function could be used to target people who have physically attended the Territory Business Centre. This could include posts about links to relevant resources, or helpful contact details for business advisors.
Target Senior Citizens - Free and paid (paid will reach beyond your pages followers)
With 30% of the Facebook population being over 60, this function will reach a wider portion of your audience than you might think. In the NT there are approximately 14k monthly users over the age of 60. Targeting senior citizens with your posts is useful when you want to communicate, for example, changes to the senior concession packages pushed to this tech savvy audience.
Target parents with Children - Free and paid (paid will reach beyond your pages followers)
Facebook allows you to direct people who have children within the following age groups:
0-12 months
0-2 Years
3-5 years
6-8 years
8-12 years
13-18 years
18-26 years
Consider the targeting options here with regards to issues like immunisations, health concerns, and education notifications.
Languages - Paid
It is possible to target based on language.
With NT’s diverse cultural demographic, it is possible to send messages to direct communities. Combined with automatic language translations, you can imagine how effective this would be in reaching non-English speakers.
Recently arrived - Paid
With the NT having such a dynamic population, this tool allows target messages to be sent to those who have recently arrived. This could be a handy feature when combined with location targeting to reach newly arrived defence personnel, or to communicate home owner grant packages to potential new buyers.
Do you have a communication challenge that targeted social communications could solve?
