If you felt like your Facebook strategy wasn’t working this year, you’re not alone.
Facebook pushed out so many algorithm changes this year, with most of them affecting Business Pages — the most major one causing a huge decline in engagement on Pages.
How many times did you post what you thought was really killer content that totally flopped on Facebook? How many times did you go Live, only to find that no one was tuning in? These are the issues that almost all marketers dealt with on Facebook in 2018.
But, I’m here to tell you: Don’t lose hope for 2019. With a few tweaks to your strategy, your business can still rock a Facebook presence in the new year.
One of the biggest reasons that Facebook Pages saw a huge decrease in engagement this year was because of increase in competition. In addition to there being more Pages on Facebook this year over last year, there was a huge increase in the amount of content being published.
Buffer, a social media management solution, reported that there was an increase from 72,000 posts per day in Q1 2017 to 90,032 posts per day in Q2 2018.
“In other words, nearly 20,000 additional pieces of content are being posted by the world’s top brands… every day,” Buffer said.
As a result of this increase, Pages naturally saw a decrease in engagement.
Rather than trying to meet a quota of posting, say, three times per day, focus on creating pieces of content that are super interesting to your audience — the kind of stuff that makes them want to engage with you.
Interestingly enough, Buffer’s research report also showed that video was not the content that was most engaged with this year. Crazy, right? We’re always hearing that we need to create more video!
Instead, images outperformed video. But, that doesn’t mean that video isn’t still an important part of your strategy moving forward.
You need to be willing to post different kinds of content to be able to figure out exactly what YOUR audience wants, and what they most like to engage with. For some Pages, that’s going to be an image, but for other that’s going to be a video.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that more than 95% of Facebook users are using the social network from their mobile device. Many users don’t even bother to check the network from a PC anymore, opting to just check the app on their phones regularly.
So, when you’re thinking about creating content for Facebook, make sure you’re optimizing the content to cater to these users. Think about:
Catering to mobile-viewing is more than about just size, though — you also need to consider the amount of time that users spend looking at a single piece of content before scrolling away.
The optimal length of a Facebook video (not including for Live videos) is no less than 30 seconds, and no more than 2 minutes.
I want to emphasize here that it’s important not to give up on your Facebook strategy in 2019. Yes, Instagram is totally where it’s at, and probably where a lot of your potential customers are hanging out, too – but Facebook is still a major player when it comes to marketing your business in the new year.
By trying out a few new things, and most importantly, focusing on creating content that your audience really loves, you’ll have more luck reaching your tribe using the social network.
Happy Facebook-ing!
About the Author:
Ellen Matis is the owner of Hello Social Co., a social media marketing agency that uses the Focus on Local Approach to help small businesses grow within their local communities. Learn more at www.hellosocialco.com.
Tags: algorithm, business, Facebook, Social Media, social media for business