Are you aware of the significant changes Facebook made on January 11th of this year?  You will need to midify your strategy or get left behind.  There is no question that Facebook is the place that most business play.  With more than 2.072 billion monthly active users and more than 40 million small businesses with active pages, it is definitely the place where most people live socially and offers great opportunities to target your audience.  So now that we are moving into 2018 what are the things you need to know about marketing on Facebook?

Marketing Update from Facebook

On January 11, Mark Zuckerberg posted an announcement on his Facebook page that rocked marketers and small businesses everywhere.  This announcement has been a long time coming for many of us, but nonetheless, it is still changing the way that businesses will interact with Facebook.  Let's break it down!

1. Building Community

“We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That's why we've always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness.

But recently we've gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”

Facebook has long been announcing that they want to build communities and meaningful relationships between their users.  Now they are defining in more depth what that means to them.  Research has shown that people that interact on social media feel more included and those that participate on the sidelines (just scrolling through feeds) can cause feelings of loneliness and detachment.  Facebook is taking this seriously and therefore giving more importance to your personal news feed based of what your friends and families are interacting with.

2. Diminished Organic Reach for Pages

Pages include business, celebrities and media.  Facebook will now be giving priority to posts from your friends and family.  Posts from pages will not be served unless their is interactions on that post.

“For example, there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We've seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.”

So what does this mean for your business?  Your posts need to be authentic and all about your story and who you are.  What builds community around your brand that gets people talking?  If you don't then your posts won't reach ANYONE!

3. What is the state of video?

In 2017, video was ranked higher in the algorithm than photos.  It didn't mean if it was live or a video you uploaded.  That is now changing as Facebook feels that passively watching a video doesn't build community and while the watch times were fine, they were not interacting with the posts.  Moving into 2018, Facebook Live streams will be the key to getting visibility to your business.  Facebook Live creates engagement and interaction with your audience.  Check out our tips for an easy Facebook Live!

4. Should I be on Facebook for my Business?

Yes!  Now I don't think you need to be active on Facebook daily or even monthly but having a Facebook Page for your business helps in so many other ways.

• People often look at business on Facebook and having a presence there gives you more legitimacy in the eyes of the consumer
• Facebook pages often show up on the first page of Google if people are looking for you – help them find you!
• It's FREE!

Conclusion

Yes this is a big change that Facebook is rolling out – but it isn't the end of Facebook.  It might change the way you market your business but it also is encouraging more engagement with your audience – and that is never a bad thing.

Let us know what you're doing to change your strategy on Facebook!