With the new year in full swing and many of us finalising our strategies for the new year, we thought that we would shed some light on some of the social media changes that Facebook will be introducing in 2018.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had recently announced that Facebook will be focusing on making their users time on Facebook more meaningful and well spent in 2018. The key focus for the announcement stems from research done which revealed the following:
“When we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long term measures of happiness and health. On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos – even if they’re entertaining or informative – may not be as good.”
So how will this be done you may ask? Facebook will be showing their followers more organic content from people they know (their friends and family) and less organic content from brand pages. So what does that mean for brand pages? Well, we have seen a decline in reach already over the past year due to the changes in algorithms as well as Facebook’s approach to ensuring that good quality and useful content is being published as well as controlling how much “sales” type content is published organically on their platform. With this change, we will experience a further decline in reach in the months to come.
Watch this video for more insight into how this will affect your page reach stats.
As you know most brands utilise Facebook to promote their company and products but just like any form of advertising you have to pay for where you play. It has become extremely important now more so than ever that brands back up their organic content with paid for advertising. Not only will the paid for ads ensure that your brand is seen by your followers or potential followers but to some degree you can control who your content is seen by. But it’s not all doom and gloom, here are a few ways in which we can make these changes work for us.
Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in your News Feed, so we suggest the following:
- Create more live video content (Videos on average get six times as many interactions as normal static imagery)
Create a Facebook Group or look for ways that you can tap into Facebook Groups that your followers are a part of
- Continue to post content that is relevant and can encourage discussions between you and your followers
- Increase your paid for ads to ensure you are seen by your followers and you also support what you post organically, but more importantly that from your posts you generate ROI.
We hope that the above has assisted you in understanding what is required going forward with regards to the world of social and we look forward to assisting you and your brand navigate your way through the social media landscape with our set of expertise.
