Facebook has just announced new algorithm updates or signals that will influence the algorithm for Facebook business pages and Facebook groups. This isn’t something brand-new or a radical change, More a refining of the current algorithm as it stands
Back in 2018 Mark Zuckerberg announced
“The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups. 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”
In 2019 the Facebook Newsroom just announced
“We have updated our algorithm to prioritize the Pages and groups we predict an individual may care about most. Some of the indicators of how meaningful a Page or group is might include how long someone has followed a Page or been apart of a group; how often someone engages with a Page or group; and how often a Page or group posts.”
As always with any changes in the algorithm, there are lessons to be learnt and helpful reminders that can help influence the way that we use social media for marketing businesses more proactively and more efficiently
The Facebook algorithm for all its complaints from businesses and marketers has really been there to help us do a better job and to better serve the public (ok and to help Facebook achieve greater advertising revenue). Ultimately the algorithms purpose has always been to give Facebook users the relevant blend of content that maximises engagement, and that’s for our benefit to. If Facebook users do not see a range of content that inspires them, they will spend less time on the platform and that doesn’t help us as marketers
So let’s explore the 3 elements or signals Facebook are now stating are signals for the algorithm
How long someone has followed the page or been part of a group
Do you want to be in business for a long time not a short time? If you want to be here in 5 or 10 years time, you need to think of engaging and wowing customers over a long period of time to get the most maximum lifetime value of the customer. Repeat purchases are what drives a successful business. In order to drive repeat purchases you need to entertain, engage and wow people to keep following your page in the long term
Some of the clients we work with businesses with low price points of £5 or £25, but when those customers are spending with the said business at least one a week, each customer is worth £260 or £1300 a year. Keeping those customers happy is our mission
The lessons you can take from this signal is to always try something new, try to blow them away at least once a week, whilst remembering what are old customer faves. It’s very easy to fall into a routine and to just bang out the same old content and never acknowledge that people are simply becoming bored. Social media is getting ever more noisier and therefore the competition for attention is even fiercer!
How often someone engages with a page or a group
If you’re doing what many small businesses do on Facebook and try and sell sell sell every single day, you are naturally going to leave yourself with a page with really low engagement
If you do what many successful businesses do on Facebook and spend time analysing what their customers love, what their customers hate and what their customers get excited about that enables you to produce content which time after time after time re-engages them with the page
This is always been a huge signal for the Facebook algorithm and is nothing new. Engaging pages get attention. Engaging pages make sales. Engaging pages fuel successful businesses
Look over your last 25 posts in Facebook Insights and see what your audience respond to
How often a page or group posts
One of the biggest worries a small business owners is a can they over post on Facebook
And let me tell you – you can over post on Facebook once a week or once a month if the content is absolute sh*te. On the flipside you could post 3 to 4 times a day easily if the content is entertaining and making that emotional impact with your audience
Social media is not an email newsletter, a once a week activity or even worse and that once a month activity. The fact that Facebook are highlighting how often a page or group post as a signal for the algorithm is a pretty important one, because it highlights the fact that frequency of posting is important
That frequency of posting is important that means you need to go into full on production mode in terms of stories, photos and videos. It’s a bit of a cliché in marketing terms, but every business is now in media business in terms that part of the daily job for every business is producing content for social media. Producing content is not a nice to have extra, it’s 100% essential. Make sure you give your staff the resources and time to produce content
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Or Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
