Many of you may have heard about the Facebook Algorithm changes in 2018. These changes have affected businesses because many businesses currently use Facebook as their primary marketing tool. The changes, such as increasing or decreasing the Reach of posts and videos, and the branded content policy, which is directly related to advertising on Facebook, have affected many businesses to some extent. Even though businesses, brands, and publishers have tried to improve their content quality, they are still severely affected by the algorithm changes. Facebook has been continuously reducing Reach. In 2007, the average number of people who saw a page’s post was 16%. After about 5-7 years, it was reduced to 6.5%. In 2016, Facebook adjusted Reach again, which was less than 2% of all fan pages. Most recently, in 2018, it was reduced again. This time, it is not necessary to talk about the percentage because there is very little chance of getting Organic Reach.
Because Facebook is a social platform that wants people to be closer to each other. It was not created to be a sales area from the beginning. Therefore, if a business wants to do marketing and advertising on Facebook, it is necessary to invest a huge amount of money in this marketing.
The adaptation and finding new ways to market through Facebook are as follows:
- Create a Group to create more Community to invite people who are interested in the products or services of the administrator, which will make the content of the business closer to the target group and importantly, the Facebook Algorithm has not yet managed the Reach in this Group.
- Live can create conversation, sharing and engagement, and Facebook admits that live is 6 times more effective than non-live, especially comments, where Facebook’s new system gives more importance to comments than the old likes and shares. But going forward, pages will probably have to focus on creating live content and encouraging people to comment and talk more, which allows business owners to improve and create content that takes into account the needs of their customers or page followers: what do they want? What do they want to see? When?
- Inviting the customer group to press See first immediately so as not to miss the news of the page and will definitely see it. Should focus on creating quality content that matches the customer group. Will make the customer group feel satisfied and impressed with the brand, resulting in good traffic.
- Talk to your customers more on Messenger. It has better integrations with other business tools. Some customers want more details than what a business owner can offer. To build credibility, business owners should talk to and clarify their customers’ questions, which will also generate more positive traffic.
In addition to adapting and adjusting marketing strategies on Facebook as mentioned above, another option is to switch to using social media or other platforms for marketing, such as YouTube, Instagram, LINE@, Linkedin or Twitter, choosing the one that is most suitable for your business.
But sometimes adapting to changes on Facebook or choosing to use other social media may not be the best way for our business. Because we still have to rely on Facebook or other platforms. It’s no different than renting a house. The landlord can change anything. That creates uncertainty that has a huge impact on the business. We have no control over anything.
Therefore, what we would like to suggest is to own a “website” for your business. Having your own website is like having a warm home where we can take care of and control everything in our home. We have full rights to our home. For example, when marketing via Facebook, the data of customers who engage with us is owned by Facebook. We cannot identify those individuals. If you want to know this information, Facebook will definitely not give you this information for free.
But when you are the owner of the website, you can control everything and truly own that data. You can know the behavior of the people who come in, as well as collect customer contact information that is useful for our business. After collecting this information, you can use this information to do Inbound Marketing through Marketing Automation or CRM (Customer Relationship Service).
Change is something everyone has to face, whether it is in their personal life or in business. What we can do is to prepare for change, rely on ourselves more, spread the risk, don’t put all your hopes in one place, or try to learn about adapting to the situation with Inbound Marketing and choose the right approach for your business and be mindful in solving problems. Every problem always has a good solution……
