Facebook Update - Social Platform Wants a Committed Relationship
Front & Center's take on The Book's big announcement and what that means for businesses like yours.
About a week ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced a major change to how he and his team continue to build and manage Facebook. In case you missed it, here are the most relevant points from his January 11th post:
“…recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content – posts from businesses, brands and media – is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions. As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts form businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard – it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”
If you are wondering what this means for you and your business, you aren’t alone. We’ve turned to professional analysts (mostly still undecided), tea leaves (inconclusive), and our Magic 8-Ball (stuck on 'hazy try again') so we don’t have any concrete evidence-based strategies to offer…yet. What we can offer, however, are some holding-pattern suggestions to manage your activity on this channel while the Zucker-dust settles.
If you are paying for FB promotions, consider investing those social media advertising dollars elsewhere until we see where this all goes. Facebook ad costs have been steadily creeping (up 35% in the last quarter alone...wowza) to achieve the same impact. Now with organic reach nearly off the table, we think your money can do more for you elsewhere. We will be watching closely and can provide you with pivot plans as needed.
Focus more time and effort in organic engagement and conversational posts on your Business Page. Like and comment on your followers posts. Try to build community. And do not sound like a sales robot.
If you aren’t on Instagram – what are you waiting for? This is the channel with BY FAR the highest brand conversion of the heavy social media hitters right now, so that’s where you should be investing your resources anyway.
If you aren’t sure where to invest marketing dollars, could use some help increasing organic engagement, or need to up your Instagram game – we’d love to help! We are expert engagers!