Being active on social media to simply have a presence isn’t enough in 2020. There are more than 60 million business pages on Facebook fighting for your target market’s attention and we are now at a place where organic reach is basically dead. Because of this, more than 6 million businesses are advertising on Facebook. Once again, fighting for your target market’s attention.
Now let me explain. Organic reach isn’t actually dead. It is still important to get people to “like” your page. However, only 2% of your followers are even seeing your posts on a regular basis. That sucks, right? You spend so much time creating really good, engaging content and then only 2% of your followers see it. Wow.
So are likes even important if those people aren’t even seeing my stuff? In short, yes...but also no, both for a few reasons.
Yes, likes are important because…
Page likes give you social proof. If someone looks up your page and they see you have a decent amount of page likes, they see that you are legit.
However,
It’s more important to have quality, engaged page likes rather than 1 million followers that don’t engage with your posts. A while back, people began “buying” likes. Bots were created to make a page look like they had a lot of followers but Facebook caught on when pages had many followers but no one was liking their posts. These people ruined it for everyone.
The ever-changing Facebook algorithm shows an individual what it thinks they want to see. So if someone continually likes your posts, Facebook will continue to show your posts to them. This is why engaging content is so important.
So if just a presence isn’t enough, what should I be doing?
Great question! Well for one, have a strategy. There should be a goal for each and every post. Here’s a short list of do’s and don’ts:
Do:
Create engaging content
Provide value to your followers. Give them a reason to want to see your posts.
Include a call-to-action such as visit website or send a message
Follow up with comments and questions
Don’t:
Try to sell in every post. A salesy post here and there is okay, but you will annoy your followers.
Post just to post. Have an objective in mind.
Be a spammer.
Share the same thing to every network. Your audiences are different, so treat them differently.
No, likes are not quite as important as they once were because...
Facebook gives you the ability to still reach your target audience even if they aren't following your page. With advertising, you no longer have to wait for your target audience to follow your page. You can start reaching them through paid media before your competitors do!
This is how you get your content seen enough to get to the point of constant engagement. Facebook gained traction fast because it was a free platform. Well now, it’s basically pay-to-play, but it’s still insanely cheap. But supply and demand… as more businesses hop on board, the prices are going up. It’s already more expensive than it once was, but it’s still affordable for small businesses to compete with the big dogs.
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