Surviving Facebook as a Brand in 2018
The Facebook landscape is constantly changing. 2018 has been no different.
What’s the lay of the land?
As you’ve probably noticed over the last few years, your organic reach has diminished and in some cases as low as a few percent of your audience is seeing your posts. This has been a consequence of Facebook’s initiative to make the personal feed feel personal again with more posts visible from friends and family, and less coming from brand pages. Read about Facebook’s latest changes here.
How to survive it?
It’s going to cost you, but that’s not such a bad thing. This is a great opportunity for anyone who isn’t afraid to throw a little money into their social advertising. With reach being limited by Facebook’s ever changing algorithms, those who are spending on boosted posts will stay relevant and on the minds of their audience, while those who have had enough of Facebook or stick to social automation will fall by the wayside.
Focus on boosting high quality posts with specific audience targeting and you’ll be able to reach more of your own audience along with users who have yet to interact with your brand.
Stop trying to beat the system.
Facebook is now penalizing brands who use baiting techniques to increase awareness or engagement on their posts. Such techniques include vote baiting (voting on a post with use of reactions), incentivizing users to share your posts for a potential reward or contest entry, or asking users to tag their friends in non related posts. Google rolled out similar penalties to your search ranking when users thought they could hack the system by loading up posts and pages with high value keywords. Best way to combat this, produce quality, relevant content your audience can’t help but share.
Give your audience a reason to care.
Quality content is king. We’ve already seen a rise in long form content making its comeback. Not only is this beneficial for your SEO. But providing content that is useful and entertaining to your audience gives them a reason to look for it on their feeds. Part 2 of this, make it relevant!
“If you build it, they will come”
Now that you’ve improved the quality of your content, make it easy on your audience and come up with a consistent post schedule. This has been a major trend on YouTube and despite constant glitches in subscriber notifications, many users know when their favorite YouTubers are posting regardless if they receive a notification. This doesn’t mean you have to put out a new video (or post) every day at 8am, 3pm, and 5pm. But, come up with a system that works for you based on when your audience is traditionally most active or engaging on the platform and stick to that. If the content is good and they know when to look for it, they will find it.
Post using the right formats.
Last thing we would suggest, use formats that are highly shareable or engaging for your audience. Video and Facebook Live would be the winners here. Facebook live is great for driving audience engagement because people can participate in the moment, ask questions and get an immediate (or close to) response.
Looking for help with your Facebook advertising? Say hello!
