Facebook has become quite a conundrum for many marketers. For years, companies of all sizes have invested in organic and paid efforts to grow their Facebook fans. The “like” served as an opt-in for consumers to receive brand messages sent “organically”.
But over the past few years, Facebook has diminished the organic reach of brand fan page messages to a thin percent of the total opt-in whole. Now the only option to reach fans is to pay for Facebook advertising which can be hit or miss and leaves organic reach all but non-existent.
For companies without large ad budgets, this is obviously a challenge. Luckily, there are options! Here are tips from our latest Social Media Marketing eBook featuring some of the top Facebook marketing experts. They offer insight that can help you regain and optimize some of your organic traction.
Andrea Vahl – @andreavahl
Social Media Coach, Author
The New Facebook Marketing
For marketers looking to adjust to Facebook’s new algorithm changes and decreased organic reach, a shift in mindset is needed.
Think of Facebook as a subscription-based marketing service vs. a free platform.
Facebook ads on an ongoing basis are inevitable. Divide your monthly Facebook ad spend between boosting posts for increased reach and ads to drive traffic directly to your website.
Spend a small amount on increasing your fan base as well. None of this ad spend needs to break the bank.
Work on effective ads so that you spend as little as possible for the biggest bang.
Mari Smith – @marismith
Social Media Consultant, Speaker, Trainer, Author
Amp Up Facebook Organic Reach
Consider increasing the frequency of your Facebook Page posts to boost your organic reach.
If you typically post 2x a day, try doubling that to 4x.
Make sure your posts are top QUALITY, relevant and timely. Include periodic invitations to sign up for offers, but craft the wording in a warm, personal way that your audience can connect with. Plus, engage at every opportunity.
Great examples to study include: Richard Branson, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, KLM, and Sprint.
Amy Porterfield – @amyporterfield
Social Media Consultant, Speaker
It’s All About the List
The energy of your business is directly tied to your email list.
Facebook ads are one of the most powerful lead generating platforms for small businesses today. Specifically, “Page Post ads” that drive traffic to a free, valuable giveaway (such as a free video training, eBook, or cheat sheet) are extremely effective.
These ads are inexpensive, highly-targeted and can be completely automated.
It may take a little trial and error, but once you find that sweet spot where your ads are consistently producing results, you’ll be hooked!
Dennis Yu – @dennisyu
CTO, BlitzMetrics
Social Media Force Multiplier
Social media marketing, email marketing, and website retargeting are all the same thing.
You’re following around users who have visited you, regardless of whether the tracking mechanism is a pixel, email address or Facebook user id.
Consider multiplying upon your strengths by getting your email subscribers to be fans, your fans to to visit your site, your web visitors to be fans, your web visitors to be email subscribers and so forth.
Try Facebook Website Custom Audiences and Google Remarketing and you’ll be on your way.
You can get even more Social Media Marketing tips from our SMMW14 eBook here.
As the organic approach in other areas from SEO to public relations to content marketing have undergone shifts, so too has Social Media Marketing and Facebook marketing in particular. Modern marketers must adapt and continuously refine and optimize their approach. Optimization isn’t just relevant for tactics, but for how you approach marketing as well. This is the core of how we approach social media at our agency and the blogging on the topic we do here.
How have you adapted to changes in Facebook’s news feed and treatment of brand fan page content? What tips and insights would you add?
Top Image: Shutterstock & CleanSocialIcons
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About Lee Odden
thank you for this post, I found it speaks so true to many marketers and others using social media for their business.
I really liked Dennis Yu’s points. It’s easy to forget that all these fancy different names we have for our interaction points with our customers – email, PPC ad, responsive website – is just our brand saying “talk to me”. In amidst a ton of other voices, saying exactly the same thing.
When you think of your social media marketing as a way of conversing in a cross and, multichannel way, I can definitely see where you’d get more benefit and bang for your buck. Enjoyed this. Thanks!
Exactly Stacey – holistic helps you realize the cumulative effect vs. trying to “convert” on every single message.
I haven’t had much success with FB marketing, but that’s because I’m in the B2B field. Do you think most FB marketing advice is for the B2C companies? I don’t see how a company like Hubspot or Moz for instance would find FB useful in reaching more customers.
Yes, and no. It’s true that there’s much more scope for B2C companies to engage with their customers and attract new ones, but there are opportunities for B2B companies too. If you have the email addresses of your current clients, use the built-in feature to “Build Audience -> Invite Email Contacts” and get them on the page. Or create a Custom Audience from your email list and use Page Like ads to get them like the page. Or setup Website Custom Audiences and start collecting everyone that visited your company’s website to be able to remarket to them in the future with Page Like ads and Link ads (drive them back to your website). Or setup a custom tab on your Facebook page to offer a free giveaway to new followers and use precise targeting by interests to generate traffic (targeting by location, interests, such as small business owners, finance, entrepreneurship, etc). It is more difficult to reach the right audience for B2B companies, but still possible with some clever marketing.
All experts are spot on but I think Mari nailed it. Engage as frequently as possible to open up channels of communication and builds relationships through your page. Awesome share!
Thanks so much for your informative post. I will add the terms to my google alerts.
Great post and very informative. Facebook is one of the most important part of Social media. So, facebook marketing tips are very important to us. Thanks for sharing.
Now a day’s facebook is the main division of social media. And it helps a lot to grow an online business. And here you explain about the basic of facebook marketing, that’s awesome. Thanks for sharing such useful things.
Today’s world is dominated by technology and all its attributes. Social media became such a hit because not only did it provide entertainment value to its members and communication to alleviate the pits of long distance friendships and relationships, for its popularity became so helpful in many businesses. It served as a platform where promotions could be established quite efficiently, and all those ways mentioned above are just a few of what could be done in facebook marketing.
The secret is SEGMENTATION. Shotgun blasts make for poor ROI.
Great F.B. marketing tips! I just started a fan page and will need information I’ve gathered here a great deal. Tnx!