January 23, 2018
Facebook recently announced updates to its News Feed algorithm in order to predict which posts users will want to interact with the most. Posts from family and friends will be prioritized, but where does the new update leave posts from brands?
The bad news for brands (and maybe Facebook users) is that users will most likely see less organic content from organizations and publishers near the top of their feed. The good news is that organizations have the opportunity to stand out among the competition and create meaningful content for users.
Here are four steps organizations can take to survive the News Feed update:
1. Plan. Measure. Evaluate. Modify. Repeat.
Marketers and communicators are asked to juggle different tactics and social platforms for their organizations. Creating a plan for your organization’s Facebook page that includes a schedule and the type of content users want to engage with will help you win on Facebook. Make sure you grasp insights from Facebook analytics and evaluate based on the feedback. Adjust the frequency and type of content as necessary.
2. Paying to play
A paid social strategy is an essential part of a winning social media plan. Boosting posts on Facebook is an easy way you can increase the reach of your social content. Facebook makes it easy to create a target audience based on location, age, gender and interests. Before you boost, set a budget based on how many users you want to reach. The larger your budget, the larger your reach will be.
3. Attention-grabbing video
What would be more effective if you had to get the attention of someone in a rush: asking someone to read a couple of paragraphs or showing a video? The answer? Show the video, of course!
Think of your Facebook audience the same way. Many users would prefer to watch a video rather than read a blog post. Video is a great way to express your organization’s voice to your audience. Additionally, Facebook’s new algorithm rewards video content, especially native video uploaded through Facebook as opposed to posting video from YouTube. Think about the different ways your brand could live stream your next piece of content
4. Engage with users
One of the great advantages of social media is being able to directly listen to and engage with your audience. Fostering conversation on your content will help drive your posts to the top of user News Feeds. Create posts that will lead to more likes, comments and shares among your audience. Start genuine conversation instead of engagement baiting customers. If you choose to engagement bait, your content will sink to the bottom of News Feeds all over Facebook.
In 2018 and beyond, Facebook wants the time that users spend on the site to enrich their lives. With the News Feed updates, you will be pushed to your creative limit to create engaging content.
To learn more about how you can get the most out of your social media strategy, email me.
