When Mark Zuckerberg speaks, all of us using Facebook as a business tool should listen! On January 11th, Zuckerberg posted on his personal FB page 
announcing changes he and his team would be making to the platform. His goal is to build a more positive user experience, and to increase personal relationships and connections. As a user I couldn’t agree more. Give me less ads, and show me what my nieces and nephews are up to.
But as a business owner…? It’s left a lot of us thinking, now what?
Here’s what the King of Social Networks had to say:
“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from 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.”
Translation: We’ll be decreasing your business page visibility, and since we are showing less ads in general, expect your cost per click to go up. At least, that’s how I am taking it. And other experts are thinking the same thing.
Does that mean all businesses should flee from facebook? Nope! It just means we need to adjust to the new flow and culture that Facebook is trying to establish. Here’s 4 strategies I am predicting will help as FB rolls out the new algorithms.
- Create an active, thriving group. If engagement is what Facebook wants, a great group is a powerful tool. I have several friends and colleagues that get the majority of their clients through their facebook groups. The key is to create a culture and conversation in your group. Don’t let it get overrun by the members posting spam and over promoting. Create meaningful dialogue and interactions. Make it a place where people want to engage with you.
- Live Video: In his manifesto, Zuckerberg talked about live video being more engaging than other types of video. Hint: Facebook live will continue to be favored by the algorithms. If you post the video on your personal page, you’ll get the easiest visibility. But it won’t draw people to your business page per se. So you’ll have to weigh out the pros and cons as to where to live stream. I’m actually contemplating having my lives duel stream from my business page and my personal page so I can test side by side what works the best. In your videos, encourage engagement. Interact with the viewers. Do giveaways. The more comments you get, the more the Algorithms will love your videos.
- Messenger: This week Facebook came up with a new feature where you can connect your ads to Messenger. If someone clicks on your ad, you can
follow up with them through messenger. It’s a great feature that I think facebook is extending like an olive branch to business owners. Sure, not as many people will see our ads, but they are giving us a great way to continue the conversation with the ones that do see it. - Improve your content. I had a 90 minute meeting with my team this week to talk about how we can improve our content on our social media platforms. How can we write better, more useful articles? How can we answer the questions business owners want to know in our videos? This new change is really going to make our organic engagement more powerful than it has been in years! The best way to create organic engagement is by creating GREAT content!
- Events: This one is going to seem crazy. Remember 4 years ago when hosting a Facebook event was all the rage? Well, I think they are making a comeback. A couple of things have changed so hear me out on this one! First, groups have been ABUSED lately. How many skirt/ mascara/ lipstick/ cleaning product groups have you been invited to? I just checked, I’m currently a member of hundreds of groups. I’ve probably actually joined less than 20. So the bulk of those annoying events that were clogging up your Facebook have moved to groups. Also, Facebook no longer allows you to invite everyone on your friend list to your event. You have to be selective. I tested out a Facebook event this January just to see what would happen. I did a 7 day event called Resolutions to Results and trained on goal achievement. I did a FB live video to promote, shared it with my email list, and promoted on my business page. In the event I let people know they could invite friends and I had 130 people register. Please if you use this strategy, don’t go back to the annoying mass invites! But it’s a great place to create content and engagement.
- Actual conversations: I predict we will need to be on Facebook less overall time, but that we will need to get back in the habit of acknowledging someone that liked, commented, or shared our post. It’s going to be less of a one sided, “look at me” experience and more of a two way conversation. When you plan your social media time, plan to make comments and engage with people.
Facebook is still a force to be reckoned with. As a business owner we have two choices, keep doing the same things we’ve done and watch them become more expensive and less effective. Or, we adjust!
Happy Connecting! And if you aren’t connected to my CEOwnership page yet, click here and follow us. I’ve got some great content planned to support you in growing your business!