What’s a Business to Do About Facebook?

If you use Facebook for business you’ve probably noticed a change in your reach recently. I know we have. Well, last week the wizards at Facebook confessed. They’re changing the way they sort content in users’ streams…again. Now you’ll see personal connections’ posts before businesses, even businesses you have selected that you want to see first. Here’s what the social media giant had to say.

Where does that leave the marketers and news outlets?

I’ve often heard marketers say in reference to Facebook it’s “fishing where the fish are.” Billions of people are on Facebook, many of them multiple times a day. They have alerts on phones so they don’t miss tags and messages. The “fish” are there. No denying it. But now it’s like Zuckerberg is standing next to marketers on the dock instructing them to cast their line in the bait bucket or pay to use “his” ocean.

Is it time to change the strategy?

 

Facebook for Business Workarounds

With the changes to streams you have two options as a business on Facebook. You can pay for views through advertising or you need to encourage individuals to share your content. The latter is more difficult, but the ideal, because people tend to believe commentary coming from other humans over advertising. In Thursday’s post we’ll cover how to increase your word-of-mouth referrals but in the meantime consider these options:

• Entice employees to share content
• Create a social media ambassadors program for your organization
• Share your business content on your personal social media profiles
• Ask friends to share your content
• Partner with a networking group to share content from personal profiles on a regular basis
• Share other business’ content in the hopes they’ll return the favor
• Give people a reason to talk about you because of excellent service, a wow moment, or a receiving a promotional item they value

Facebook is clamping down on your ability to reach your ideal customer in any way other than paying for it but there are some workarounds. These workarounds involve getting customers (and others with personal accounts) to share your content. It takes more work but ultimately, it’s more valued in the eyes of prospects.

In our next post we’ll provide tips on increasing word of mouth referrals.