Well roared, Mark.
Dino Ceccato, 22. January 2018
You did it again and shook up the marketer community. The recent announcement of a new adaptation of the newsfeed algorithm is making waves because the much-loved reach is already being curbed again. What?
- The adaptations are in favour of the users and thus also in favour of the brands
- At the risk of repetition: there is no right to free reach. With no medium in the world
- Now the strategy and quality bells should ring at the last social media nomad too
The best right away: Trash videos will (hopefully) decrease. Our newsfeed will increase in quality. All the users who have been complaining about trash content and who were therefore about to lose interest in facebook have been heard. Mark Zuckerberg is convinced that the less (time) the community spends on facebook, the less attractive the platform is for brands and their advertisers. Touché!
Facebook should become more social again and that's a good thing. The basic idea of social networks is the connection of people. And the marketers should write this more and more into their strategy. With TGIF-, nice weekend or trivial product postings you don't make connections.
The future content strategy can only have one basic direction: Quality before quantity. The zero relevance posts mentioned above can be avoided in the future. What counts is what is relevant and serves a concrete KPI. And for this purpose, appropriate investments are to be made (production + media). It's no different with any other medium. See point 2 above. Nothing new, really.
Consequently, the strategic approach is even more important. Quality is the absolute maxim! Facebook is no "and then we can quickly post it" channel. Rather than forcing three posts per week no matter what, while investing little or nothing on media spend, marketers should focus on one relevant quality post with the right media push and targeting.
In addition, specific facebook groups for brands hopefully finally create the breakthrough. Nothing exemplifies the basic idea of social networks better. Facebook groups, an instrument that has been massively underestimated by marketers in their relationship with the established community.
And of course, decentralised approaches are becoming even more important. Influencers help strengthen the link between brand and consumer. As long as they have been correctly identified and selected (this will soon be followed by a own blog post).
And then there are the Micro Influencer and the Social Ambassadors: employees and customers from our own community/database. The most important influencers at all help to share brand content with personal messages in a decentralized manner and to achieve an organic, targeted reach in order to reach new target groups.
In any case, it's "No panic on the social Titanic". Wait and see how the adjustments affect your own brand page. At the end or at the beginning, everything depends on the strategy and connection of all mentioned elements as well as their consistent implementation.
Make social great again!
