As of January 11th, 2018, Facebook has announced a major change to their platform. Mark Zuckerberg writes, “We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience.” In light of those goals, Facebook is shifting to de-prioritize content from brands and business pages in favor of posts made by people’s friends and family.
Read on to learn how your business should shift your Facebook Marketing strategy to stay relevant in the new Facebook news feed.
Don’t Panic: How to Adapt Your Facebook Marketing to the Changes
What This Means For Social Media Marketing
This update prioritizes people – your friends and family – over pages. There’s no two ways about it – it’s going to make reaching a wider audience much harder for businesses on Facebook. Facebook itself has been open about the fact that this is a move to prioritize user experience over advertisers.
We’re going to have to change the way we think about Facebook marketing.
So, What Do We Do Now?
#1: Run Ads And Boosts Strategically
The new update WILL make your organic posts less visible to the average Facebook user. To combat that, get really strategic about what ads you run and what posts you boost. It’s probably time to consider increasing your ad spend budget.
If web traffic is important to you, try thinking about every post you make linking back to your website as a potential ad – because you’ll probably have to boost it to get link clicks. You may also need to consider web traffic ads, if you haven’t before. It will also be beneficial to run carefully-targeted like growth ads to increase how many people are seeing your content and to build up your engagement numbers.
#2: Invite Followers To Set Your Page To “See First”
While posts from Facebook business pages are being deprioritized, your most loyal fans can change that in their own news feeds. Make a post inviting your followers to change their Facebook settings so that they see your posts first, and never miss any company news.
To see a page’s posts first on your newsfeed, all you have to do is go up to the “following” menu directly beneath that page’s cover photo, open the menu, and select “see first” instead of “default.”
#3: Avoid Engagement Baiting
In a similar effort to increase meaningful effort, at the end of December Facebook announced that they would be penalizing “engagement baiting.” Engagement baiting is spammy content that goads people into liking, commenting, or sharing without adding value for the user or inviting them to engage in meaningful dialogue. This includes phrases like “tag a friend,” “comment YES” and “Like this post if you fill in the blank.”
Facebook has an algorithm that detects these types of phrases, so if you employ them you’ll see the reach on that post decrease.
#4: Avoid Passive Content
With this update, Facebook has made it a mission to shift users away from passive content consumption. It’s a return to Facebook’s roots as a truly social network, something meant to create meaningful engagement and connections between people. Passive content, posts that encourage people to just mindlessly scroll without interacting, will no longer perform well.
Make sure your Facebook posts invite people to share their experiences and opinions, and take action.
#5: Instead, Create Meaningful Engagement
So how do you go about getting engagement following Facebook’s changes if you’re no longer just inviting people to “like and share” or click a link? Focus on creating posts that will invite lots of comments, posts that people will relate to and want to share with their friends and family naturally.
For example, say you’re a home builder sharing a new floorplan. Instead of posting…
“Check out the new floorplan! Like and share if you can see yourself living here!”
Try…
“We’re excited to share our new floorplan with you! We love the spacious kitchen island and wood flooring! What’s your favorite feature?”
Pro tip: Live videos are a GREAT way to create meaningful engagement – watching a live video makes people feel like they’re part of the action!
Facebook’s latest update will undoubtedly create new challenges for marketers. The old Facebook marketing strategies and tricks won’t be as effective as they used to be. But you can use this as an opportunity to build better, more meaningful relationships with your fans and customers. We’re looking forward to shifting to a more personal approach to Facebook marketing, and we hope you are too.
Re-evaluating your Facebook marketing strategy? Let’s chat about it!