Facebook Is Changing! How Will Your Company Page Be Impacted?

Posted by Adam Zobel | Fri, Feb 16, 2018

 Facebook Is Changing! How Will Your Company Page Be Impacted?
If you haven’t heard about it yet, let me be the one to break the news to you. Face­book is chang­ing in a mas­sive way, and things will nev­er be the same. To quote the R.E.M. song, it’s the end of the [Face­book] world as we know it. But before you crawl into your social media bunker and wait for impact, we’ve put togeth­er a quick overview of what you need to know to survive. 

What’s Hap­pen­ing to Facebook???

changes to FB business pages 2018 You may remem­ber that Face­book was found­ed as a way to sim­ply keep peo­ple in touch. It was exclu­sive­ly for col­lege stu­dents at first, but quick­ly explod­ed and expand­ed to include all sorts of young folks, then not-so-young folks. Busi­ness­es then real­ized the poten­tial gold­mine and began seek­ing their for­tunes, turn­ing Face­book into a mar­ket­ing play­ground. You can reach almost any audi­ence and demo­graph­ic with laser pre­ci­sion, and as Facebook’s mar­ket­ing tools grow even more sophis­ti­cat­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ties become even more endless. The result, inevitably, is that Face­book has become over­ly-sat­u­rat­ed (almost drip­ping) with media that peo­ple don’t real­ly want to see. If you use it, you know what I’m talk­ing about. All of that is about to change. 

Face­book is going back to its roots, chang­ing their algo­rithms to serve up con­tent in your feed that you real­ly want to see and that they’re pos­i­tive you’ll find interesting.

Face­book Changes and Your Busi­ness Page

While all of the above sounds great, and it is in many ways, this does mean your busi­ness’ com­pa­ny page will feel a neg­a­tive impact. Organ­ic (unpaid/​promoted) reach is going to be slashed, and Face­book will penal­ize you for using click­bait lan­guage, or for beg­ging for engage­ment, clicks, likes, and shares. Doing that is a bad prac­tice any­way, but now it will be cat­a­stroph­ic for your post’s reach.  In oth­er words, your page posts have very lit­tle gas in their tanks and just won’t chug along as far. 

Unless…

Thriv­ing and Sur­viv­ing in the New Face­book Era (it can be done!)

tips for small business Facebook pages Here’s what you need to know!

Paid Pro­mo­tion Will Become Essential

Let’s face it: Face­book is hap­py to take your mon­ey, but it IS mon­ey well spent. Pay­ing for on-page pro­mo­tions (boost­ing) is a cost-effec­tive way to push your most valu­able con­tent fur­ther, and you can refine/​tune your audi­ence to get the most bang for your buck.  Face­book Ads will also be more valu­able than ever. If you have ques­tions about this for your con­tract­ing busi­ness, let us know! With the right guid­ance and devel­op­ment, Ads can be a pow­er­ful way to ensure your con­tent still reach­es its tar­get audience.

Cre­ate Engag­ing Content

Remem­ber, Face­book will give more val­ue and pri­or­i­ty to posts that are engaged with. If you can get a bunch of com­ments, fan­tas­tic! How do you do this?
  • Go for QUAL­I­TY posts over QUANTITY.
  • Cre­ate engag­ing con­tent (to put it blunt­ly, don’t be boring!).
  • Share pho­tos of your work, your team, your dog, or that cool thing you saw in the sky. Peo­ple are visu­al, so give them visuals. 
  • Be YOUR­SELF! Online view­ers are smarter, more sophis­ti­cat­ed, and more crit­i­cal than ever, and they can smell click­bait a mile away. Show your company’s per­son­al­i­ty and have fun, cre­at­ing a page and posts that peo­ple actu­al­ly want to see.
  • Go LIVE! Live videos are engag­ing, and offer a direct con­nec­tion between you and your viewers/​followers. Video in gen­er­al is impor­tant, so if you’re a lit­tle cam­era shy don’t feel you need to go live at first. Just make videos and start shar­ing them.
  • Share! Social media is, well, social. Don’t make the con­ver­sa­tion all about you. Share some­thing cool you saw, an arti­cle you read (if it’s rel­e­vant), or pro­mote a dif­fer­ent local business.
  • Be ready to uti­lize Face­book Mes­sen­ger! More on that right here…

Offer Val­ue

If we’re real, there are more than enough Hap­py Mon­day memes to go around, or reminders that peo­ple need cof­fee at 3pm. Think out­side the box!

Build a Fan­base, Not Just a Following

You can give away all the prizes you want, or even pur­chase a boat­load of page fol­low­ers, but that doesn’t fur­ther your brand or cre­ate advo­cates. 150 ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers is bet­ter than 11,225 who can’t real­ly remem­ber why they’re even fol­low­ing you.

Stay Con­sis­tent!

Keep at it, and stay con­sis­tent. After all, if Face­book is more selec­tive, it just means that you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to shine that much brighter than your com­pe­ti­tion. The algo­rithms are weed­ing com­pa­nies out! Dig deep, ded­i­cate your­self, and get ready to grow.

About Adam Zobel

Adam came to us with a background in teaching, writing, and a work history that included serving numerous small businesses (including assisting with content writing and marketing efforts). He was a natural fit, and enjoys connecting with our clients, creating unique content that reflects their culture and voice. We keep him busy! Adam handles blogging, email campaigns, website content creation, copywriting for print and promotional materials, social media, letters, mailers, and more. He also does a dynamo impression of Nicolas Cage, but you didn’t hear that from us. Adam lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two boys. He is also a 1st cousin of David’s wife!

     
   
       

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