Facebook has become a popular platform among small businesses that want to reach their audience. Companies gained easy and affordable ways to engage with their audience directly and personally.
Facebook’s plans may complicate these interactions in 2015.
Researchers at Facebook have gained some insights into the needs of users through recent user feedback. The results could impact how small businesses promote their products and services.
The research found that users were far more interested than ever in the stories of their friends or the Pages they follow in terms of promotional content. In 2015, Facebook will make major changes to its algorithm, which will remove promotional content from the News Feed.
The organic reach of Pages that only promote promotional content will continue to decline over time.
What does this mean to small businesses that rely on social networks to promote their products and communicate with customers?
In a recent blog post on Facebook, the new algorithm is specifically targeted at three types of posts.
- Posts that only push people to download or buy an app
- Posts that are a push to enter sweepstakes or promotions without any context
- Ads reusing the same content in posts
What can you do to combat the negative effects of the new News Feed algorithms and continue to make the most of social networks?
Use Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights gives businesses important information on their fan base, engagements, recent activities, organic reach, and more. Understanding and using Facebook analytics for business pages can help small businesses gain insights into their audience so they can communicate more effectively.
Treat fans like friends.
The new algorithm will, in theory, remove all posts that are too promotional from the News Feed. Businesses will need to stop thinking of Facebook posts as advertisements. This could require some creativity. Small businesses need to speak to their fans as if they were friends.
You don’t try to sell your friends anything when you are with them. Try posting something your followers are interested in so that they can link your products and services.
Content is king
This change makes it more important than ever for businesses to focus on content, true engagement, and relationship-building instead of direct promotion. Companies that spend more time creating content that is relevant to their audience, rather than pushing out promotions without context, will be more likely to appear in the News Feed. Content that has powerful headlines, relevant images, and easy sharing options will perform better.
Add other social networks.
This is a great opportunity for small businesses to experiment with Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Social networks are different in their standards of posting promotional content and also the audiences they appeal to. Each social network has a diverse clientele. This allows you to establish communication with potential clients that would otherwise remain untapped.
Try posting different content to different channels, depending on its type. Videos, for example, work well on Facebook. However, Twitter users prefer images.
Consider paying for advertising.
Paid advertising is a great way to market your business digitally. Many companies run highly targeted ads with a small budget. Start allocating budgets to Facebook ads. Start small, test your strategy, and adjust it as needed.