Face Off with Facebook

Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

Facebook has recently introduced some changes and that prompted me to look at some stats and facts to see if I am still going in the right direction with my promotion. Things change all the time, and no one has time to research all of it, so I am sharing what I have learned with you in a short (what I hope will be short!) summary for you.

Facebook remains the most effective form of advertising. Bottom Line.
If you don’t agree, you can stop reading and go make a post on Instagram or Linkein because you will need to work harder to get the reach Facebook provides. People log in an average of 8 times a day and refresh their newsfeed 11-15 times a day and stay 20 minutes (or more) per session.

“Facebook sees themselves as and advertising tool. Businesses can’t expect to get things free. Keep a personal page and share posts back and forth from the business page to your personal page.”
Quote and stats from Samantha English, "Retail Marketing Academy Webinar," Aug. 20 2018

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Facebook ads are #1 factor to increase revenue in 2018
Facebook 49%  /  Instagram 28%  /  Linkedin 11% /  YouTube 10%  /  Twitter 7%  /  Pinterest 3%  /  Snap Chat 2%

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What do we want from Facebook? ENGAGEMENT with our customers
What does Facebook want for us? ENGAGEMENT between people with similar interests.

These two goals are very much alike. We need to remember that Facebook is our advocate as users. As business owners, we have to consider their ways and goals to keep Facebook a viable tool for advertising.

“Engagement rate, after all, are better than simple views, because you know that users aren’t just happening to see the Story, but actually paying attention.” AdEspresso by Houtsuite https://adespresso.com/blog/top-updates-facebook-monthly-need-know-now/

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What's New in Facebook?

Recently Facebook has increased security and tweaked their requirements for good social engagement. They have updated the content they will “reward” or “penalize.”

WHAT IS A FACEBOOK REWARD?
Rewards = Facebook sees your post as positive, interactive and something others WANT to see and will increase your ranking in your followers newsfeed which will increase your reach as it spreads out to friends and their friends (the ripple effect).

Facebook will REWARD

• Reactions (heart, sad face, shock face, angry face) are rewarded more than Likes (thumbs up- just stop using them for your friends in business!) Some people say it doesn’t give you anything, but it does keep that person in your viewing feed.
• Comments and Shares are rewarded more than reactions.
• Videos are rewarded more than comments and shares.
• Live feeds are rewarded more than uploaded video.
• Video with subtitles Communicate with them even if their sound is off.
• Engagement with a shared contact (gifs, emoticon…anything from a person you both have as a Facebook friend.)
• Replies to comments (always comment on your own posts in a relative way. Not like you are talking to yourself, but add information, gif, or more information.)
• Links shared through Messenger.
• Time and Day when YOUR followers post. To find this, go to Insights > Posts and it will show you a bar graph of the time of day your followers are looking at your page. Schedule your original, native posts and ads to target that popular time.
• Post Type Positive, interesting, personal, reflective (your original thoughts.)
• Average amount of time spent on conversation.
• Completeness of Page Profile This validates you as a company. Fill out all you can in the About section. This helps people find you but also validates your business is active. They are trying to weed out old businesses and profiles that might get hacked, so they have begun to turn them off if a person doesn’t comply with requests from Facebook to update.
• Keep images Small Smaller images load faster and give a better user experience which Facebook values. Reduce posts to at the minimum 900px wide. Look up other size requirements to be sure you are getting the correct dimensions for the platform you are using and Facebook doesn’t have to take time to compress or enlarge your photo.
• Using their New Features:
  • Crossposting from Facebook to Instagram We could share to FB from Instagram but now you can do both.
  • Info and Ad tab Additional information for ads such as who has clicked on it and other usually hidden information is available to you when adding a business to this area.
  • Behavioral Ads Include people in ads who have similar behaviors that would use your product.

WHAT IS A FACEBOOK PENALTY?
Penalty = Facebook see your post as irrelevant, negative, or too much like a sales pitch, and will decrease your ranking in your followers newsfeed which will decrease your organic reach where people will not see your posts.

Facebook will PENALIZE for

• Overly Promotional Posts Promoting your business avoid phrases such as, “Visit our store,” “Call now,” and other very typical sales jargon. This is so hard for us in advertising and marketing! Talk directly with your viewer asking a question about a problem your service or product solves to engage a conversation such as “Have you ever…” “What do you do when…”
• Giveaways or Contests I have seen these soar and I have seen these fall flat. It really depends on the product you are giving away and if it connects people to a cause. A lot of people will share for a cause even if they don’t want the product. Always encourage a like, share and comment to increase your organic reach. They would prefer you make a Giveaway an ad then it will fly out to everyone!
• Unlikes If someone unlikes your page it can do damage to your organic reach! If you see this happening on  your page, try some of the things that Facebook rewards then create an ad from that post to get new followers interested in your page again.

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A Few Busted Myths

MYTH: Scheduling through a third party will hurt my reach.
When using social media tool like Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social, you might see less engagement, however it may not be about the tool as much as the content.

“Posting through a third party social media management platform will not harm your organic reach on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social network. It won’t improve your reach either—effectively, it’s the same as posting natively.” Maxwell Gollin, Faclcon.IO May 22, 2018 https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/topics/social-media-management/why-using-third-party-social-media-management-tools-wont-hurt-your-reach/#/GEN 

MYTH: A post with a link to another website will automatically limit my reach. 
We have been told Facebook will limit reach when making a post with out bound links to a website or blog. When in truth your website you are linking to is what may be holding you back.  Websites that are not mobile friendly, have large images or have slow load times for any reason are bumped down in Facebook user’s feeds because a viewer’s attention is lost when having to wait.

“If you want to maximize your organic reach on Facebook, you need to ensure that your web page has lightning fast load times (especially considering how organic reach has been dropping lately).”

“To be clear, Facebook actually prefers link posts with preview images (what pulls directly from the website automatically) over photo posts with links in the captions. According to their research, links in the link post format receive over twice as many link clicks on average as links buried in photo captions.”
Maxwell Gollin, Falcon.IO Aug. 5 2018 https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/case-stories/cs-social-media-strategy/optimize-your-facebook-links-in-2018/#/GEN 

MYTH: Does a new Facebook Algorithm Only Show You 26 Friends?
Why would they do this and only limit you to 26 friends? It goes against their business model of eventually dominating the world! Seriously, be very cautious of things like this as well as the funny apps and games. Just don’t. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-facebook-algorithm-26-friends/

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Ads Reign Supreme

Facebook considers paid ads the highest form of communication and will protect the functionality of your ad. It WILL pop up in your customers feed when they are on their device. And there are a lot of analytics that will prove it’s productivity. You have a choice to “boost” a post or “create and ad.”

Boosting vs. Paid Ads
Boosting posts has low conversion, doesn’t allow you to target users and only targets any user who happens to be online. Much like a bill board, they have to see it when they are on their device and paying attention. Great for events, live feed videos, time relative posts you want people to see immediately to your followers at an event that you are all participating in, but not something that needs targeting.

Create an Ad From Your Post
Control your post by creating an ad from the post, choose your target audience, location and EVERYONE who is in your criteria WILL see this in their feed. The beauty of Facebook ads! To do this, go to  Ads Manager > All tools > Page Posts > Published Posts > Find the post > Actions. Now set your objective for the ad. Note: You can’t edit anything when creating an ad from the post, but it carries the comments and engagement with it (which is social media gold!)

In a time where there is nothing as sure as change, I hope this takes some of the mystery out of Facebook for you and your business. Be confident that you are in control and you are using the most effective tool in advertising today!