Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, you would know that Facebook bought out a new update in the last few weeks. There has been A LOT of talk about it around marketing and business circles, and most people are dubbing this ‘Facebook Zero.’ Because it is basically the end of Facebook Organic Page Reach. If you have a Facebook Business page, you’ll already know that the reach of your Facebook Page has significantly decreased over the last few years. You are lucky if you 10% of people see the posts that you work hard to publish. And now Facebook is suggesting it will become even lower than that!
So, should you just pack up and leave Facebook? Or is it just a pay to play platform for businesses now? Well, let’s not get that drastic! The premise for these changes is that Mark Zuckerburg is wanting the members of his platform to have more meaningful conversations with each other – what a novel idea for a social media platform! What this means for you is not producing more content, but actually engaging with people (one to one) on the platform.
In light of this, how can you create more engaging experiences as a business or brand on Facebook and not get left behind in the newsfeed? Here are my top 3 tips to engage with your customers and prospects on Facebook.
One to One Conversations
One of the biggest changes that this update will bring is more one to one converations between INDIVIDUALS in the newsfeed. So conversations between family and friends. Comments between two real people on posts will be prioritised in your feeds. In the past business owners have preferred to keep their personal and business lives seperate. That’s why pages work so great – because you can interact with contacts without them having to see what you did last Saturday night!
But this is a huge shift recently and will be even bigger as we move into this new update, that personal profiles will be on the rise. The conversations you have with customers and prospects using your personal profile will carry more weight in the Facebook News Feed.
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups have been on the rise for some time. And if you already have a Facebook Group you’ll know it’s one of the best ways to engage with your people on Facebook. Facebook believes that these conversations are meaningful and will again prioritise them in the newsfeed.
Facebook Groups have so many benefits. Group members get a notification when you post in a group (something that does not happen when you post on your page). It’s not just you talking to people like on your Facebook Page. Group Members can create posts and it builds a real community inside groups. If you haven’t created a group yet – nows the time to jump on it!
Facebook Live Videos
Facebook Live Videos are super engaging and create posts that have hundreds of likes and comments. This is also an indication to Facebook that your post is a meaningful conversation. As well as the fact that you are getting yourself onto the screens of all your followers – this creates trust, legitimacy and shows that you are an expert in your field.
Compared to videos that you just upload straight to the platform, these live videos are a super effective way to get engagement and create posts that rise in the news feed.
By using these 3 types of engagement posts on Facebook you can navigate this change in the algorithm and rise to the top, instead of getting lost in the sea of noise.
