It’s no secret that businesses are reaching fewer and fewer of their Facebook fans through their business pages. In fact, a recent study by Locowise found that organic, or unpaid, posts reached just 2.6% of all brand followers on the network. With figures so low, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking that there’s little point in taking time and effort to curate content for your Facebook Page any more. But before you sack it off, there are a few things you might want to consider:
Bigger doesn’t always mean better
It can be tempting to want to grow the number of likes your Facebook page as much as you can, but it isn’t all about size. Locowise found that Facebook Pages with smaller audiences have a significantly higher engagement rate and percentage reach than those with millions of followers.
As your Page aggregates new followers you need consider that the needs and wants of your audience will change. Whilst a large audience can be impressive to prospective customers, it can also mean that your social content becomes more generic. Take advantage of the benefits that small and medium businesses have every day: a more personal service, a more friendly manner and a more transparent way of working. Then try to translate these into your social messages.
Facebook is trying to help
Believe it or not, Facebook is trying to do the right thing. Facebook have been changing the way that the Facebook News Feed works recently – by adjusting what posts show up and how that is decided. Instead of showing you absolutely everything, Facebook’s secret algorithm choses to show you high quality content that it believes you’ll be interested in, over posts that are similar to ones you’ve ignored in the past. This should mean that where your business’ posts are shown to users, it’s genuinely of interest to them.
Facebook drives social referrals
Where businesses are doing it right, Facebook drives 25% of all referrals to websites. That’s way, way higher than Twitter (<1%), Pinterest (5%) and Google+ (<1%) – and it looks like it’s going to continue growing in the future too. What’s more, Shareaholic have found that social networks now drive as much traffic to websites as search engines – which means it’s more important than ever.
We’re here to make friends
The other consideration is that perhaps you’re doing it all wrong. It can be tempting to make the most out of every opportunity to promote your business’ products and services, but Facebook is a social network, made for social interactions – not sales messages. Try to instead put yourself into the customer’s shoes. What information are they trying to find? What interests them? Then make sure your Facebook posts deliver the answers.
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