The New Age of Facebook Marketing

Facebook is now pretty much a given for any social media marketing strategy. Of course it can be more or less suited to your business depending on your industry, but it’s vast user base still makes it relevant with the right approach.

How Facebook Changed:

Facebook has changed quite a bit in the past years, and especially since its IPO. Here’s some of the ways how:

• New forms of advertising (sponsored stories, promoted posts, etc).
• “Supposedly” with the release of new forms of advertising, Facebook downplayed how often a Facebook Page’s posts will be seen in the fans’ news feeds*. Now, anytime you post to Facebook, only 5-15% of your fans will actually see your posts, and those who comment/like your content regularly will be the ones who make up that percentage. So its now become harder to reach the fans you worked so hard to acquire in the first place!

The New Age of Facebook Marketing:

So the question now becomes, how do I reach my fans and grow my fan page?

Content: know what types of content do best and make a nice mix of it

• Visual posts get the most likes, comments, and shares.
  • Photos are #1, and memes are the most viral form of content.
  • Videos #2
  • Status updates #3
  • Links #4
• Positive posts get the most likes, negative posts get the most comments.
• Questions and polls increase number of comments by 92%.
• “Caption this photo” results in 5.5 x more comments.
• Posts that include a clear call to action get 45% more interaction.
• The best image and status updates are less than 80 characters.

Timing: is everything

With the increased difficulty in reaching your own fans, you need to take every measure you can to increase the chances of them seeing your posts. This means sharing your content at the peak times. See our previous post on Best Times to Post to Social Media, but here is a snapshot of the all time best times to post:

1. Saturday at 10:00 pm.
2. Saturday at 8:00 pm.
3. Sunday at 7:00 pm.
4. Saturday at 7:00 pm.
5. Sunday at 6:00 pm.
6. Friday at 8:00 pm.
7. Thursday at 7:00 pm.
8. Sunday at 8:00 pm.
9. Monday at 8:00 pm.
10. Sunday at 12:00 am.

 Ask for Engagement!

This step truly illustrates how Facebook is changing. Before, you could just share a piece of great content and many of your fans would see it. However, if your audience is the quiet type (some audiences will naturally engage more or less than others), then your posts will become less and less seen if people are not “liking”, “commenting” and “sharing” them.

This has pushed many page owners to now directly request their fans to “like”, “comment”, or “share” their posts.

So consider these ways to promote engagement:

• Ask direct questions. Example: What’s your favourite breed of dog?
• Ask people to”like” your post. Example: “Like” this post if you agree, or “Like” this post if you find this dog cute!
• Ask people to “share” your post. Example: If you can relate to this picture, “share” it!

The new Facebook forces us to take more direct measures to increase engagement. It’s a little unnatural, but it is what’s required now. Don’t do this for every post though, as you may annoy people. Try fitting it in occasionally to begin with, and see how people react.

The Bottom Line:

The whole point of using Facebook as a business is to grow your page, and ultimately – your brand and sales. To grow your page, follow this cycle:

If you need help putting together your Facebook strategy or need someone to manage it completely for you, we offer 3 types of social media packages for business.

Thanks for reading, and please share! : )

*Facebook says they did not decrease the value of Pages’ posts in fans newsfeed in order to have Page owners pay more to have their posts seen by fans, but rather it was reasons of spam. Either way, how often your Facebook Page post will appear to fans is much less than it once was.

Data Sources: WatchTower, WildFire, Mashable, Pagemodo and Bddy.me