The top 3 things you need to stop doing on Facebook – now!
Marketing on Facebook can be a really frustrating place. You work hard to get lots of likes and then see your organic post reach drop. You might have seen little or no interaction with your posts, making is seem like you’re talking into thin air. It can seem like Facebook just want you to pay to advertise and so that keep changing the rules, making it harder and harder for you to reach your audience.
You know that almost half of all adults in the UK have a Facebook account, so when you discount babies, children and elderly people, that’s nearly everyone. You might even know that out of this figure around 70% of people with a Facebook account check it every single day. And out of those the average person check Facebook up to 15 times a day!
That’s a lot! Your ideal customer is bound to be on Facebook at some point – but how do we reach them?
You may have heard me say ‘You can have the best product in the world, but it no-one knows about it your business will fail’.
Ahh, so what can you do to improve your organic Facebook reach? By organic we mean the reach (the number of people who see you post) that you didn’t have to pay for.
Well here’s 3 things you can stop doing that is hurting your organic reach.
1 – Stop posting and running
The main algorithm rule that you need to be aware of is the friends and family rule. This essentially follows the rule that what people want to see when they go on Facebook are posts from their friends and family - not necessarily your business posts.
So to get more people see your posts you’re going to have to encourage your audience to engage in some way with your posts. You want to get them to like, comment or share your posts. And out of those 3 things, the comments are the gold dust!
The more people engage with your posts and the more you chat back, the more Facebook will show your post to more people. Having a conversation going on under your post signals to Facebook that people are having a good time, so it’s going to show your post to more people, so they have a good time on Facebook too.
So rather than see Facebook as a place to share your content, offer and products, see it as a place to build relationships with your audience. Get those conversations going. Be natural, relatable and authentic - that’s what we all want from each other as human beings.
So, choose what you post carefully, check out your insights to see what you audience is interested in and give them more of the same. Get to know your audience and what they respond to and start those conversations!
2 – Don’t oversell
No-one really goes onto Facebook to be sold to. We go there to be inspired, entertained and to learn new things. So rather than just post up your products and services or talk about your products and services, think about how you can add value.
Get to know your ideal paying customers. What do they like, what are they interested in, what questions do they have? How can you create posts that help them, give them answers, add value?
If you’re Facebook posts are 100% salesy, people will quickly switch off and won’t be interested in reading your posts or watching your videos. How can you be off service to your audience?
3 – Limit the outbound links you refer people to
Again, Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook and so if you’re encouraging people to click away from facebook they will lower your reach. Try as much as you can to stick within Facebook. So, if you have an event – list it on Facebook, with the link to buy tickets in the event function and when you post about the event link to the Facebook event link.
If you are going to use video, Facebook would rather you uploaded them straight to Facebook rather than using a youtube or vimeo link. Remember Facebook and youtube are in competition, so Facebook will never reward you for sending people to it’s competition!
As I write this it appears that Facebook can be a little bit of a monster – what Facebook wants, how to please Facebook, don’t piss off Facebook! But really it gives you access to so many potential clients, that you can build relationships with – it’s worth the effort!