Facebook Changes Again and So Should You!

Facebook went and changed things, again. I noticed these changes a while back and as a result, participated in a handful of webcasts over the last few weeks discussing the recent changes with Facebook pages and how we can adapt to better manage them. It’s important to note that not all of these changes should frustrate you, some of them were good and those others, well, we really just have to adapt. Good thing I wrote that blog post last month about change, right?! Read it here if you missed it.

I want to share what I learned from these webcasts so that you can make some improvements to managing your company or organization’s Facebook page. These aren’t all new changes, some have been around for a bit, but many of you may still be in the dark. Here’s the Good and the Bad…

  • Organic reach on Facebook is slowly dropping to zero, eventually, it will get there.
  • In the past, it was always our goal to get Likes, Comments, and Shares; Shares being the most valuable. This isn’t necessarily the case anymore. You need to work on engaging your fans within your posts. Basically what this means is that you can revitalize recent posts with comments and increase the number of fans you reach as a result.

If you made a post yesterday that received comments, you need to add to the conversation by making a comment on this post. Get what you can out of the life of that post BEFORE you make a new post on the page. If you make a new post when you are still getting traffic to an older one, you will lose that traffic. Back when we were all concerned about the Edgerank of our pages, we made sure to make one or more posts on our pages each day, this isn’t how you should manage your page anymore.

  • Now you need to be concerned about ‘Last Actor.’ Facebook’s algorithm now keeps track of the last 50 interactions for each user and puts more posts in their newsfeed from those friends or pages they’ve recently interacted with. You might have noticed that you generally get interaction with the same people on your page but you can create more Last Actors with viral posts. This is good and bad. On the bad side, Facebook wants you to pay to reach more fan newsfeeds, on the good side, your Last Actors are going to be the biggest supporters of your page and have the most interest in what you do.
  • Use Last Actor to your advantage and make a fun post that may go viral to get new Last Actors, and then make a post that promotes something important to your page.
  • Another new thing going on with Facebook is ‘Story Bumping.’ Ever notice that even if you request ‘Most Recent’ in your newsfeed that older posts still find their way in? This is Story Bumping, which means that a post you might not have seen from a friend or page you haven’t interacted with recently might later get put into your newsfeed because Facebook saw it as a post that was popular but new to you. Because of Story Bumping, there is an 8 percent increase in the visibility of your posts. You can get your posts back on newsfeeds by creating conversations with your fans in the comments area and revitalizing your posts as I mentioned before.
  • Don’t make posts that use like, comment, and share in the text and never make a text-only post. Take the time to find a corresponding image for your posts. With that said, be careful with images that contain text. Facebook HATES like baiting and making posts with text in the images can get pretty tricky. Those images that want you to Like if you love one thing, Comment if you like another, or Share if you like a third are posts made just to increase traffic on a page, this is like baiting. If it is recognized as alike baiting post, it’s not going to get much traffic.
  • Spend less time sharing from the big pages and make your own posts. Facebook wants to decrease the frequency that the same content is getting shared over and over. Instead of sharing a post that you like, save it to your computer and make it a new post from your page. Just remember to give credit for that image when you need to.
  • The ‘About’ section of your pages is going to be more prominent so make sure all of this information is up-to-date and accurate; don’t forget to list your website. This change hasn’t rolled out for everyone yet.
  • You can add other pages as a ‘Page to Watch’ to keep an eye on your competitors. This is a great way to connect, get ideas, and stay competitive. This is another update that not everyone has access to yet.
  • Remember that something like 99% of your fans is not directly visiting your page and more and more people are using Facebook only from their mobile devices. Once they become a fan, they are interacting with you from their newsfeeds. Those that visit your page are either checking you out for the first time or are looking to contact you. So worry less about Facebook tabs and apps and more about good quality posts.
  • Keeping the above tip in mind, make sure you have a mobile-compatible website and a social compatible website if you want people sharing your website content on social media.
  • -Stop using the ‘Boost Post’ option on Facebook! This is very limited and costs you more money. Under your ads account, the ‘Page Post Engagement’ option has many more options and at a better price. You can now create multiple ads and Facebook will test them, and then show the ones that are doing well. You can also choose to advertise on mobile devices, desktops,s or both.
  • ‘Power Editor’ is another useful tool when managing ads. Here you can upload emails, create ‘look alike’ audiences, and target a specific audience. You can save this information and target those specific audiences in later ads as well. Note: This only works in the Google Chrome browser right now.
  • Make use of the ‘Conversion Tracking Tool’ to see how well your ads are doing and to keep track of what actions people are taking on your website.
  • Give something away! If you want your fans to take action, like sign up for your emails, for example, give them something to make it worthwhile. This doesn’t have to be something big either; it can be as simple as a free PDF checklist or cheat sheet with valuable information.
  • One last extra tidbit -use picmonkey.com and canva.com for FREE templates, images and for designing your ads.
  • I hope you find these tips to be useful in managing your Facebook pages. If you have questions, feel free to shoot me an email or connect with us on our Media Horse Marketing Facebook page.