Facebook for Business: Snack Sized Social Media Takeaways

By Tara Kingi

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1. Most commonly used social media platforms

2. Pay to play - organic reach

3. Not all content is created equal - what Facebook prioritises

4. Timing for engagement

5. What doesn't work - click baiting and like gating

6. Looking to 2015 - video and Atlas

7. Creativity

Most Commonly Used Social Media Platforms

1. Facebook 94%2. Twitter 83%3. LinkedIn 71%4. Youtube 57%5. Blogging 55%6. Google+ 54%7. Pinterest 47%8. Instagram 28%

Unsurprisingly, Facebook dominates the B2C space.

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2014.pdf

Facebook

Facebook is the go-to social media platform.

As of September 2014:

- 864 million daily active users- 703 million mobile daily active users on average- 1 billion+ active users monthly

Source: http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/)

Pay to Play

One of the biggest problems facing businesses on Facebook is the discouraging decrease in organic reach.

We all know that we are not seeing every single ‘story’ in our newsfeeds, especially with most of our newsfeeds presenting the ‘top stories’ default.

Content is heavily affected by user interaction and lack thereof.

The Breakdown:

- 6% of people see your content- 1,500 – 15,000 potential stories - Up to 300 of these are served up in a user’s newsfeed - 100,000+ algorithmic weights

Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/News-Feed-FYI-A-Window-Into-News-Feed

Not All Content is Created Equal

Different types of link posts:

1. Native (Facebook favours these link posts)

2. Status + link – preview

3. Photo post + link

T/A: Post native links and experiment with the different types of posts.

Image Source: https://www.facebook.com/LacenRufflesSource: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2014/08/25/facebook-cracks-down-on-click-baiting-promotes-native-link-format/

Timing for Engagement

- The faster your audience interacts (LCS) with your post the more likely it is to gain real estate in additional user’s newsfeeds

- Content with high engagement is more likely to get ‘story bumped’ at a later stage

- Saved articles (new feature in 2014) also reappear intermittently in users newsfeeds

Source: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/07/introducing-save-on-facebook/Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/News-Feed-FYI-A-Window-Into-News-Feed

Timing for Engagement

T/A: Experiment with the timing of posts around your audience’s peak times online.

T/A: Experiment with CTAs in your posts – including encouraging users to save articles.

Other Influencing Factors

- Frequency of interaction with the person or page in the past

- Post format – users that predominantly interact with videos will see more videos in their newsfeed

- How many other users have interactedwith that particular post

- How recently the post was published

Click Baiting

Most people tend to prefer headlines that help them decide if they want to read the article before they click it.

Facebook also takes into account:

- Bounce rate- Engagement with post after reading article- Time spent reading article

Source: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/

Like Gating

An update to the Facebook policy means that as of November 5th:

“You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, check in at a place or enter a promotion on your app's Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.”

In the past you could make it compulsory for users to ‘like’ your page before they could access exclusive content, enter a competition etc.

Now you have to woo your potential audience.

Source: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/08/07/Graph-API-v2.1/

Facebook

T/A: It’s more important than ever to know your target audience. Prioritise quality of your followers over quantity.

T/A: Focus on creating good content and integrate your CTA.

T/A: Those that choose to like your page will be those that are genuinely interested. Make sure you reward and add value to your audience. Be intentional about caring.

Video

- 2014 has seen the rise of the micro video.

- Decline in Youtube videos on Facebookand an increase of native videos.

- Video posts have an optional CTA complete with a button, URL, descriptionand headline.

- Insights show the metrics on each of your video posts including click to play vs autoplay.

T/A: Incorporate video content into your content strategy.

Source: http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/2279-content-creators-flee-from-youtube-flock-to-facebook-for-videosSource: http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/2279-content-creators-flee-from-youtube-flock-to-facebook-for-videos

Atlas

- Last year Facebook purchased Atlas from Microsoft.

- They have since rebuilt and relaunched it.

- Essentially it will enable businesses to serve targeted ads to customers across devices without the use of cookies on mobile devices using the data from their Facebook profile.

- Currently they are only accepting new customers and partners by invitation.

Source: http://atlassolutions.com/

Atlas

Source: http://atlassolutions.com/

Creativity

- Make your marketing social instead of using social media for marketing

- Cross-platform integration

- Whether you are B2B or B2C everything is H2H or P2P

Source: http://mashable.com/2014/10/31/best-social-media-campaigns-2014/