Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement about the changes Facebook is making this year, includes focusing less on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions. What does this mean? Great for the everyday user, not so great for brands. In turn, business are concerned about their reach. Outside of spending more on social ads, we break down the 3 best ways your brand can succeed on social and beat the algorithm.
Person versus Page - Facebook's Decreasing Organic Reach
I was researching new business opportunities and targeting local wineries who may need help in the social department. Some who posted infrequently, some who posted only text and others who only posted recycled content from someecards versus telling their own story.You could tell those who really didn't understand Facebook as they had set themselves up as a "person" years ago, and never made the switch to a page. In the past I would say this is a horrible idea. The first reason being you have to approve friends versus allowing people to click one button and become a fan. The second, and probably most important, is it goes against Facebook's terms, businesses are supposed to be pages. The third being you have limited access to resources - analytics, advertising buys, check-ins.
However, I'm going to have to eat my words because I noticed something unusual. The "pages" set up as a person were getting 100 + likes a post with a fanbase that was only a few hundred strong. A 50% engagement rate without advertising on a FB page is unheard of today.
So, what was happening? These "pages" weren't being penalized by the decrease in organic reach because Facebook was viewing them as people. Their content was actually reaching their fans. Remember those days?
I don't condone you setting up a business as a person for the reasons mentioned above, but it does speak to the fact as a page you are going to have to work harder than ever before. Set up advertising, mine your analytics and create content worth sharing.
Do you really need Facebook ads? Yes.
Remember when Facebook ads used to be a nice to have? If you want to reach even a third of your fanbase those days are over. As Facebook decreases the organic reach of pages you can expect less than 10% of your fans to see your content. Here are a few strategies for tackling the ever decreasing organic reach.
- Budget for ads. Simple enough. You need to carve out a certain amount of dollars to get the content that matters most in front of your fans. Whether that be specials sales or a new product. Consider boosting at least one post weekly to keep top of mind. The good news is you don't have to throw thousands of dollars behind a buy, depending on your audience size, sometimes $5 a post will do.
- Diversify. Sure Facebook-owned Instagram will probably follow suit in a year but in the meantime see what kind of organic exposure you can gain. Twitter has an ad product but as of now they aren't "editing" your stream the way Facebook does. That said the Twitter stream moves so quickly it self-edits in a way. Pinterest is testing ads and favoring those with a bit of development prowess - rich pins rule - but you don't have to advertise at this point in order to get seen.
- Create content your fans want to share. Even if a mere 5% of your fanbase is seeing it, if your content is good that 5% may share expanding your reach.