Facebook made the mistake of cutting down organic reach of brands and turned itself into a typical ad platform similar to TV or double click, while it should have facilitated brands to truly connect with people, to build a long-lasting relationship and to provide value.
But there was no money in it. Instead, Facebook focused on revenue. If you want reach, you pay. And brands pimped social advertising into a stream of "buy now" ads, trying to get the best bang for their buck.
T
he "Explore Feed" offers a much more promising ground to truly connect with people, even beyond pages that users have already liked, and it doesn't seem to have any ads yet.
The idea behind the Explore Feed is to help Facebook users discover more content across the social network, beyond posts from friends and Pages you already follow. Instead, this feed surfaces recommended content it thinks you might find interesting, including posts, articles, photos and videos from sources you haven’t followed yet – like Facebook Pages and other posts from publishers or news organizations.~ Techcrunch 2017
This is Awesome! Let's look how exactly we can use this change to get some traction.
*If you were already good at social before facebook became a money-crazed machine, read no further, you just have to go back to doing what you were good at. but I will try my best to put forward a process that will help you scale meaningfully in social :)
Brands Don't Sell Brands, People Sell Brands
Ask your self a simple question.
What do you want your followers to know about you?
Decide what you want them to remember and hand it to them. Great brands never leave it to chance and you shouldn't either.
I know, easier said than done. Bigger brands have a clear brand guideline but if you are a much younger brand it's all about experimenting until you hit the right chord.
You cannot hold billboards and shout out " THIS IS WHY WE ARE GREAT! ". Mike Yapp the director of youtube has put forward an excellent framework to help brands to figure out how you can deliver value to users.
Sucessful campaigns are not just about selling stuff, or creating more unwanted noise.It's about creating something that enhances life, that is memorable, that delights, inspires and suprises. Something that makes a person want to own it, riff on it, and share it with others ~ Mike Yapp. Director, Youtube
When users find value they tend to tell others about it. Adding value doesn't necessarily mean you are going to drive conversions. The goal is to be a brand that users want to engage with. Once you build the relationship you can get onto sales.Nobody wants to get married on the 1st date ;)
A brand might not be able to address all of the factors below, but it should thrive to at least address two.
Entertain
This might be easier for some products than others. Whichever product that you are selling there are lot more ways that people are entertained on social media than there was ever before. One key thing that brands need to embrace is online personalities that are loved by people. Here is a pretty cool video with superwoman from youtube.
See the comments. It works ;)
Remember you can get creative with whatever online trends from memes, gifs to catchy phrases. It's up to you to decide whats best for you.
Inform
You Guys remember Billy Mays? Check out the video below if you don't know who is.
I KNOW! I would buy my self a quick chop too.
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” ~ Theodore Levitt
Build your content so that it clearly articulates the end result. This is a part of figuring out what business you are in. For example, A refrigerator manufacturer is in the business of keeping your food items fresh and clean.
Billy was an expert at communicating the end result, be like billy.
Provide Utility
Can you help users get something done while they are on facebook? If you can then that's awesome. All the more reason for users to engage with you. For example: Can I log in to my messenger and check my bank balance? Can I get a weekly update on my internet usage through messenger? Using bots have become much easier than it has ever been. If you are not already using them, you should. Let's consider another example. Take a mountain bike brand. I would love to see my feed with places I could go to, tricks I could do, tips on maintenance so on and so forth.
Growth Hacking Tip
It might be difficult to figure out what direction to take if you are starting off. But you can always learn from your competitors and improve. Here is how you can find out all the ads of your competitors.
Go to your competitor's page: https://www.facebook.com/lipton/
Use https://findmyfbid.com/ to find the competitor page id by inserting the page link
Put the ID into https://www.bigbigads.com
There you Go!
You can use the same tool to see your competitors organic posts as well, but you need have a paid account to do so. If you think its worth, I'd say go for it.
STOP SHOUTING! Have a Conversation
If you shout, nobody is interested in what you are saying. Stop shouting at your prospects to buy your product or services and most, most importantly to Comment or Share! Too many companies want you to comment, share and like to a point all of the FB competitions are around it. WTF are you trying to achieve?
Instead, Add Value.
Connect People - Build Communities
The cornerstone of the internet is the ability to connect people. If you want to win in the digital space you need to have a clear understanding of how to bring people together. A brand that is exceptionally good at this is the Humans of New York. I often find myself reading through comments for a considerable amount of time thinking how amazing it is to see that people from different parts of the world can be united under a facebook post.
This for me is the true value of the internet.
F#$% Vanity Metrics, measure for "SO WHAT?"
Avinash Kaushik has a pretty awesome test to identify metrics that matter. Ask the metric so what 3 times, if you cannot do anything about it, it's not a good metric.
Before we get down to KPIs let create a measurement framework. This should ideally be the 1st thing you do before you get to creating or publishing content on social media. If you are already publishing, make sure you get your team and build a measurement framework for your social media strategy.
1.Conversation Rate: Measure with https://www.truesocialmetrics.com/
The # of comments per post.
2. Conversation to inbox rate : Manual
The # of comments you have replied to via inbox/The # of replies
This is a very interesting metric, it will show if you user is truly engaged. I am not aware if there is a tool that can measure this right away, but you certainly can do it manually with a bit of work. Having bot to automatically send out a message via inbox to those who comment will significantly increase the number of conversations.
3. Amplification Rate: Measure with https://www.truesocialmetrics.com/
The # of shares per post
4. Applause Rate: Measure with https://www.truesocialmetrics.com/
The # of likes per post.
5. Conversion Rate: Measure with Google Analytics
It is important to make sure that your SMM strategy contributes towards your digital strategy. Clearly identify the micro and macro conversion you want for your overall business and measure how traffic from these organic efforts are helping to reach your targets. Click here to learn how you can use UTM tags to measure SMM impact through Google Analytics.
Organic effort should be alongside your paid SMM strategy. At the end of the day the true value of social media advertising is all the different segments you can create to narrow down your advertising to deliver the right message at the right place at the right time.
Don't bombard your consumer with too much of your brand. Build experiments based on insights from surveys, focus groups, and industry reports to find the optimum social media strategy for your brand.
Let's get social and always, always be human :)