The Business of Facebook and You
Oh how times continue to change, yet stay the same..kind of fitting for Groundhog Day! A year ago, Facebook posted on Facebook’s official blog, that Facebook is reducing the number of overly promotional page posts in users’ News Feeds.
“As part of an ongoing survey we asked hundreds of thousands of people how they feel about the content in their News Feeds. People told us they wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content.”
Here we are just over a year later and Facebook has posted an update that they will using qualitative feedback in order to show more relevant stories in newsfeed. “We will rank stories higher in feed which we think people might take action on, and which people might want to see near the top of their News Feed.”
So what does this mean to you? If you are using your Facebook personal page for your business this change will likely affect you. Facebook will no longer share promotional material through personal pages. If you want to spread information about your product or service you will have to open a Facebook page for your Business, Facebook advertising account and pay for ads to share the news of your services and products. Make sure you have your business page if you would like to continue to engage with your customers, share specials, and promote contests, and product. Now it’s more than ever important that you are presenting content that is interesting to your followers.
Here are some of the traits that make Facebook organic posts feel too promotional:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads* (Facebook newsletter)
So what do you do if you do not have the budget to spend on Facebook Advertising?
- Post consistent and relative content on the right Social Media channels. Writing content that is valuable to your customers and prospects is a start. The reason Facebook made their changes was in response to user complaints that there was too much promotional content. Share content your customer is interested in. For example, if you are a restaurant, customers might be interested in a recipe they can try at home, throwing an event relative to your cuisine, or community events. Creating engaging, relative content will help build stronger rapport with your customers which may translate to more value than ‘take two dollars off today’ promos. Have you been around someone and all they do is talk about themselves – constantly. Do you avoid that person? That’s what happens when businesses create social media feeds filled with nothing but self-promotions. Your customers will tire of a crowded feed of coupons and sales but they will share cool articles, try the recipes and think of your restaurant, as well as, tell their friends about you.
- So maybe you can’t run large advertising campaigns, but if you start developing good content that speaks to your customers in many ways you will gain a much greater following than if you are just constantly promoting your greatness, or on price. The more you share, the more you care, the more followers and customers you will include you in their conversations.
- While you are sharing your content, do not forget to correctly format and link your posts back to your website pages where that content is relevant. This will not only help you in search rankings, but will link the customer back to your website for reservations, product information and questions.
- Did you know 90 percent of information that comes from the brain is visual?~Hyerle, 2000. Make sure to post images on each post to engage your visual followers, cross post them on Instagram with a #hashtag, and link in your bio so that all things lead back to your website.
- Lastly..If you have a small budget for advertising… but not much you can still maximize your advertising return. If you are strategic about your spend, you can post ads when you know your customers and followers are online. If you are a restaurant you know your customers and followers are looking for dinner options from around 4-8pm, lunch from around 11:30-1pm, and for breakfast from 6am-8am. So the best time to post is the time they are thinking about dinner, lunch or breakfast.
If you need help with your digital marketing…Give us a call to schedule quick consult