If you’re a business using Facebook marketing to promote your product or service, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the news feed “Armageddon” about to destroy your Facebook page.
This week Facebook announced that posts from family and friends would be given priority in the newsfeed. It’s a trend the social network has been moving towards for some time. 2017 was a rough year for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, and it’s seen as his first move to start fixing the social network.
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571
Speaking about the changes in a post on Facebook’s website, Adam Mosseri, the head of Facebook’s News Feed said its main focus was to encourage engagement between users’ friends and family, and to ensure they didn’t miss content they cared about.
“Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.”
In this article, I’ve rounded up the best advice from the experts on how you can revise your Facebook marketing strategy.
See first
Businesses can still use the “See First” option to make sure their followers don’t miss their posts. When your followers choose to see you first, your posts will appear at the top of their news feed.
To enable this feature, click on News Feed Preferences in Settings.
Engagement
Brands only stand a chance of reaching their fans if posts receive engagement.
Mosseri is clear on this, adding: “Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”
· Before posting, question whether the content will make people want to comment or share
· Look at other brands who are getting loads of engagement and identify the key strategies
Video
Engagement on posts only with images or links is decreasing. One of the ways you can boost engagement is through video – Live video specifically. Mosseri notes that pre-recorded video can be a “passive experience” with little engagement.
Discussing a Buzzsumo study on Medium, Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream, pointed to engagements with video increasing by up to 10 percent.
If you’d like to start experimenting with live video, you need a very basic set-up to start. I’ve used Live video to stream press conferences and provide project updates.
Groups
Facebook’s been punting Groups for a while now. Groups are more personal than pages, and offer a great space for discussion and even polls for your business.
Mari Smith, small business and Facebook marketing expert, tells Adweek Facebook was focusing on groups. “Facebook is really building out groups. It’s almost building a new News Feed, a separate Facebook—[are] groups the next Facebook?”
Paid advertising
Organic reach has been falling on Facebook, marking a shift towards paid advertising.
In a post on Spin Sucks, Gini Dietrich, of Spin Sucks, said paid would become even more important, and was now a non-negotiable part of any organisation’s Facebook marketing strategy.
Facebook Ads has detailed targeting capabilities. If you’re just getting started its worthwhile checking out Facebook Blueprint for free courses on Facebook advertising.
Instagram
Instagram – for the time being – is much less crowded than Facebook. In the Live video below (which I recommend watching for more practical tips on how to revise your social media marketing strategy), Michael Stelzner makes the case for an increased focus on Instagram.
https://www.facebook.com/smexaminer/videos/10156042221879383/
Invest in channels you own
Facebook – the world’s biggest social network – will form part of any businesses’ social media marketing strategy for some time to come.
The key is that Facebook is not the sum of your marketing strategy. Invest in the channels that you own, like your website.
Social Media Today said this means learning the basics of SEO (or getting expert help), and experimenting with other social media channels popular with your audience.
Moz is a great SEO resource, and they have free tools to help with your keyword research.
