Recently Facebook made another change to the way our Facebook page posts are viewed. It seems that Facebook will be giving greater reach to posts that come from your friends and family than from businesses - organically. Now since Facebook was set up as a social network for people to connect with people this isn't a bad move, right? Since people complain about too many people doing business on Facebook it isn't bad, right? Here's the thing... my friends and family's posts should come first; I agree with that. Then relevant business posts should come next for me. And how does Facebook know what's relevant to me? My previous engagement with Facebook pages is one of the keys, so if I haven't engaged with any of your posts for a while, then I likely won't keep seeing your posts, sounds good to me, too! After all, why would I want my newsfeed cluttered up with posts from people and businesses I haven't engaged with for a while, right? Now some are saying your organic reach will go as long as 1 per cent... that's OK too and here's why.
This presents a great opportunity for marketers, business people and entrepreneurs to UP THEIR GAME!
Time to stop posting endlessly about your sales and discounts and your products and services alone. No one wants to see that constantly. Facebook is not a newspaper. You don't just open shop and post how great you are and get business, if that's what you want, then call your local paper and take out an ad - oh wait that doesn't really work as well anymore either does it?
Most people are not on Facebook to be sold to. They didn't come on to hear how great your widget is. They came to Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends AND to be entertained, informed and educated. Now if you want to just post about your business, services and offerings, then you can go ahead and do that but if you want anyone to see it, you better be prepared to run some ads, which isn't a bad thing, I use them for myself and my clients and teach people how to use them all the time, they are an effective and results-oriented way of getting your message out to the right people. BUT, we also want engagement, we want the people who like our page to see our posts, to answer our questions and to respond regularly. The more of that you can get going on your page, the more people will see your posts organically (meaning not using ads) because your content will be seen as popular and entertaining, informative and educating. Then, when more people see your posts, your occasional promotional post won't be considered totally spammy and unwanted. In fact, they will want to hear about your business more because you have entertained, informed and educated AND made a personal connection with them.
So how can we change things up to show up more with these recent changes?
1)Post more often - test it, watch what happens, track your engagement on your posts and try different times of the day to post
2)Post at the right time - use the insights tool on your page to find out when your page fans are online, then post when they are there, so they have more chances of seeing your posts
3)Take up Facebook live - yup, start live streaming. Facebook LOVES video and super LOVES live video. I've been posting live video on my page every week for a while now and my reach is through the roof for a page of my size and what's my ads budget been lately? Zero. Nada. Zilch. But my reach is consistently over 150K!!!
4)Stop talking about YOU, start talking about what connects you to your fans - Serve moms and you are a mom yourself? Then talk about running a business and being a mom. Share your struggles (and solutions) with the things they are struggling with (bedtimes, temper tantrums, school lunches, summer holidays, co-parenting etc.).
In the fitness industry? Talk about your journey, share what you eat, post recipes, post encouragement, show your audience you understand how hard it can be.
In skin care? Share other health items: benefits of water, sleep and nutrition for example. There are so many things we can connect with people about, they want to connect with you before they buy from you, you have lots in common with them, dig deep and find it!
5)Ask questions! - Ask about your audience. Make it easy to answer, "yes/no" or multiple choice questions for example. Find out about their dreams, struggles, successes and more. They will know you care about them and THEN be more likely to do business with you.
Those are just some of my suggestions, there really are so many ways that Facebook's changes to the way your posts are showing doesn't matter, not if you approach Facebook with the right mindset.
Now how will you change up how you use your page? How will you build connections?
Need some assistance with growing your business with Facebook?
Then book a 15 minute Facebook Success Session with me and let me show you how you can get more clients and customers from Facebook? Book your spot here.