As you may have heard, Facebook made a big splash in the news last week with Mark Zuckerberg's announced changes (post, newsroom) to how their algorithm surfaces posts from businesses, brands, and media in their news feed.
If the news didn't make it to the top of your feed, Facebook has decided that it will prioritize posts in the News Feed that spark conversations and inspire meaningful interactions between people. These interactions can be any form of engagement, but interactions between people like comments, shares, and messages in addition to posts from friends will be weighted most heavily.
So as you develop your 2018 social strategies here are 3 tips to ensure success for your business on social media.
Focus on Engaging Content
According to Facebook, "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."
This means that if you are already creating quality, engaging content that sparks conversations, then you're in a great place. You may see a small drop in your reach, but your strategy won't be drastically affected. However, if your content doesn't get much engagement it's time to change your strategy.
Invest Time and Budget into a Paid Social Strategy
For brands this is the final nail in the existing coffin of organic (free) reach. Because of that brands should focus the majority of their efforts and budget on paid social strategies that drive real business results.
Facebook News Feed Ads are a powerful marketing tool for small and medium businesses and our research across more than 300,000 ad campaigns has found that Facebook ads have the good rates, performance AND diversity of options to fit most business needs.
Diversify Your Social Strategy Beyond Facebook
It is also important to remember that Facebook is not the only solution to a successful social media strategy. It is just one piece of the puzzle.
And while you should continue to make Facebook a part of your marketing strategies, you should also include different platforms to drive the best results for your business.
Start spending more time in the planning of your multi-channel strategy and be prepared to change it if something is not working and as the social networks make additional changes.
