How are you feeling about Facebook right now?
If you are like me then you may be feeling a little despondent since their updates in January 2014 and again in January of this year, why?
Because it is clear that your organic reach is declining on your Facebook business page right now, almost down to 2-3% so in plain simple terms for every 100 followers you have only 2 or 3 of them will actually be seeing your updates in their Timeline. Ok, I have seen higher rates than that for my clients but the 2-3% has been the worst case scenario so far.
Basically Facebook have tweaked their algorithms…“hang on, their what??”
Their algorithms, the way it decides what appears on people`s Timelines and the recent tweak has seen the decline of promotional and sales type posts in favour of more interesting and educational posts. Therefore if you are sending out sales pitches or promotional posts on your Facebook page then you can forget about it being seen by the masses, unless you are prepared to pay for it!
So here are 3 tactics that I feel you should be using right now to help with your exposure and engagement on your Facebook business page…
3 tactics to use on Facebook today!
1 – Use Native Videos
No I don`t mean go and post the film Zulu on your page! Video is big and Facebook are loving it, yes it is easy to post a link to a video from YouTube but try posting what we call `native` videos. Basically posting a video directly on to Facebook rather than directing in from a third-party site such as YouTube or Vimeo.
Bonus tactic – Facebook allows you to add a Featured Video to your page, this will be one video that has a prominent position on your page, ideally a `native` video.
2 – Have you engaged your CTA button yet?
“Here he goes again, my what?”…Your CTA (Call To Action) button, Facebook introduced this at the end of last year and you have probably seen it on your Facebook page towards the top and at the bottom of your cover image. It is basically a button that you can use as a Call To Action (obviously Martin!) to direct visitors to your page to another destination and to take action, such as:
- Book Now
- Contact Us
- Use App
- Play Game
- Shop Now
- Sign Up
- Watch Video
Unfortunately you are unable to edit these buttons right now as it would have been perfect to be able to add your own text in to the CTA button, for example, I would ideally like to have `Contact Me` or `Contact Martin` rather than `Contact Us`. However this can still be an effective tactic to drive people to a particular landing page on your website or to take a specific action such as `Sign Up` or `Book Now`
3 – Now I love this one…Find out what made people unhappy!
This is a little gem hidden away on Facebook. You may or may not have used Insights on your Facebook Page in the past, if you haven`t then you are really missing a trick! However hidden away in your Insights is a tab where you can see all the posts that your followers or visitors may have hidden, reported as spam or unliked your page from.
“Where do I find this then Martin?”
Go to your Insights tab and under the Posts section click on the arrow in the top right hand corner to display a dropdown box and from there select Post Hides, Hides of All Posts, Reports of Spam, Unlikes of Page.
This will show you any or all of your Posts that created some negative feedback such as:
- That particular post was hidden from their Timeline
- They selected `Hide All Posts` of yours
- If they reported that post as Spam
- Or they unliked your page
This is valuable information and will give you a fantastic idea of what NOT to post in the future or at least tweak your posts for your audience in the future. Don`t panic though and get too disheartened if you see that people have been reacting negatively to your posts, at the end of the day you are never going to please everybody and some posts people will like and find useful but some they may not. I can probably guess that the sales type of posts will receive the most negative feedback out of all of them.
Remember my old saying?...”People do not go on Social Media to be sold to!”
Ok, that`s it!
I hope you find these 3 tactics really useful, let me know how you get on using them.
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Any questions please get in touch
Until next time…
Martin
