As if working in times of Covid aren’t hard enough. Now the 2 sources we rely on to build our businesses organically have changed the algorithm that’s resulted in our visibility crash banging in to 2021!!
With privacy changes, Facebook will no longer be showing you who liked a page or show you content your friend or fans may have liked or shared.
Engagement is down to 1.6-2% in groups and pages! Across Facebook and Instagram!
But with 2.2 Billion users and 25% of those users logging in daily, we cannot afford to say no to these media channels!
It’s pretty soul destroying to see all of your hard work all of a sudden be completely ineffective. So, the only way to combat it is work out a plan to overcome the challenge!!
First, to layout how Facebook will be ranking (valuing) your pages and groups!
- How long your account has been active!
- The percentage of current followers’ engagement in posts and page I general
- How consistently you post
- How actively you engage with the followers, reply to comments etc…
- The amount of time spent in stories
- It will prioritise content from friends and family.
- And de-prioritise content that was published in the past, or the same content published by multiple sources!
- Engagement bait, asking for comments, follow feeds, will be penalised!
Essentially engagement and interaction as they’ve always been are essential. The difference is that the organic reach has dropped hugely as they try to encourage paid advertising! Let’s be honest, free space to advertise your business, all seemed a bit to good to be true!
So whats next for you! How can you still make a difference and reach your audience!
1.The most vital and valuable move you can make is to ENCOURAGE ENGAGEMENT! It’s time for your authenticity to shine!
-Don’t be spammy or click bait betty in the way you post! Be authentic!
-You’ve got to entertain, excite and engage people with inspiring, funny and interesting posts!
-Create posts that people will want to share- ones that entertain and offer great value
2. Quality always wins- Focus on High quality content
-Videos that are at least 3 mins long!
-Posts that have images and text
-Avoid outbound links- they want to keep people on the platform not move them away!
-When re-purposing content you’ll need to be more creative and make enough changes to the post to make it different!
-Re-posting or repeated posting of the same content will be penalised!
-Copying and pasting posts across different pages, groups will also be penalised!
3. Post in the times when your audience are active!
-Use your page insights tool to see when your audience are most active!
-My B2B audience are active- 10-3am and then 6 to 8pm
-My B2C business 9am till 9pm
4. Use my Video to show your followers how to make your Page or Group a SEE FIRST.
–HOW TO CHANGE FOLLOW SETTINGS ON PAGES
– HOW TO CHANGE FOLLOW SETTINGS ON GROUPS
5. Ask for support- As a small business owner we rely heavily on the support of family and friends. Let them know it’s challenging times in the Social media Landscape and that their post shares and interactions could really help build up the interaction overall across the channels.
6. Minimise your response times!
-Diarise daily nurture times to ensure you’re responding to messages and comments within 24 hours.
7.With organic reach at less than 2 %, it’s time to embrace the fact that low a low-cost ad campaign might be the leverage and maximise exposure to your audience.
-Do not BOOST posts! This is a waste of money as you’ll not be reaching the most optimum audience and the Return on Investment (ROI) is not very good
– Using Ads could help to boost your organic reach(via page and post clicks, likes and follows)
-Grow a new audience and find new customers
-Finally Facebook and Instagram are prioritising the smaller businesses and saying no to the big advertisers, so lowering entry costs for ads and freeing up valuable space!
Overall, this feels like a big blow to us as business owners. We’ve enjoyed a long run of a great organic marketing environment that before the likes of social media just wants available at this level.
It’s allowed the dawn of the online business age, offering everyman and woman, no matter who they are or where they come from to become a business owner and find success. And that is a beautiful thing!
Let’s look on the positive side. Facebook and Instagram and working to improve the user experience, which means user satisfaction and higher retention. They’re still valid spaces for us to market our businesses! If we can adjust the way, we post and interact and learn to work with the new algorithm. Then we can still find success here!
If they’re limiting the bigger advertisers theres more space for the smaller business owners like me and you!
I know we’ve been saying this for a few years now, but authenticity, showing up truly as you. Sharing interesting entertaining and fun post to engage your audience is all more important than ever now!
Ultimately, our objective should be to collect the details of everyone we encounter on these channels. Creating valuable downloadable that offer incredible value for them to use and at the same time you can build your Email Funnel!
Having an email funnel and directing your viewers, followers from Facebook/Instagram to there, is vital you’ll then own those contacts in a way that’s never possible with SM. You can use the contacts to create a conversation and start to build a relationship with them! Building the know, like, trust and ultimately leading to the sale.
If you have any more quesitons about the changes and how you need to adapt- Post in The Wild Hearted Entrepreneur Group or email me at Lucybennettcoaching@gmail.com
