Redesigning Your Facebook Marketing Strategy – Guest editorial

By Amram Margalit, Leverate

Social media has become an inherent part of any business’ content marketing strategy, so chances are your business has a Facebook page. If that is the case, brace yourself: your Facebook reach and engagement are probably about to drop.

Facebook’s most recent algorithm change is designed to promote content that inspires discussion and helps build more meaningful interactions, over content that simply gets liked and shared a lot. Mark Zuckerberg shared on his wall that “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… 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.”

With these recent changes, many marketers are scratching their heads for alternatives.

This is a perfect moment to redesign your content strategy, to come up with content that aligns with Facebook’s new algorithm, and to come up with new ways to distribute it. Some things you might want to consider to turn this new marketing challenge into an opportunity are:

Use influencers – Influencers are, above all, people. Research and listen to your audience to find out what they like and then find an influencer that speaks to their interests. Influencing is not the same as endorsing. You are not looking simply for someone to say your product is great. You are after someone who has a narrative similar to yours and can blend your brand in that narrative seamlessly.

Use live video – In attempting to compete with other live video platforms such as Snapchat and Periscope, Facebook tends to reward live videos over other types of content. Plan a series of live videos in which you can let your personality shine while sharing valuable information and providing an inside look. Ask questions and answer your audience’s inquiries to keep the conversation going.

Pay to play – While Facebook’s organic reach leaves much to be desired, Facebook Ads are exceptionally good when it comes to targeting your audience, and the cost-per-click make them a far better option than advertising on other platforms. Consider remarketing too. While targeting new audiences via ads may become costly, retargeting has an outstanding conversion opportunity.

Develop pieces that spark meaningful conversations – Drop the clickbait strategy and focus on increasing networking instead. Instead of asking funny questions, opt for relevant and engaging ones that create dialog and tap into differences of opinion.

Leverage groups – Groups are a great way to build community around your brand. While groups require a big effort to build and manage, once users become engaged they feel connected to each other and conversations are easily sparked. And the best part? The new algorithm does not impact content from groups.

Consider other platforms – That’s right, Facebook might be at the center of the social network universe, but it is not the only place where conversations are happening. Use this opportunity to explore other social media platforms, such as twitter and LinkedIn, as well as forums such as reddit.

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