Don’t have time for Content Promotion on Facebook?  Here’s why you can’t afford to skip Social Media Marketing Strategy…

Social Media Marketing is an important part of the content creation process.  Posting content to Facebook can be a great idea if you know that your connections are interested in what you have to say.  However, making your posts appear in people’s newsfeeds is about much more than having a large following.  Even if you have a solid social following and a dedicated readership your content will not perform to its full potential.  Facebook has slowly reduced the reach of organic posts but you can increase the reach of your post through organic as well as paid advertising techniques.  Now is the perfect time to take a look at the algorithms that Facebook use to determine whether your content should be displayed and explore the paid advertising techniques that are right for you.

The Social Media Problem

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are now encouraging users to promote their posts with paid advertising campaigns.  Newsfeed space is at a premium.  The problem is simple:  An increasingly large amount of social media activity is competing for a finite amount of news feed space.  Facebook uses its algorithms in an attempt to tailor the content to suit the needs of each individual user.  However, computerised algorithms can only do so much.  After all, the content boom isn’t going away anytime soon.

The organic reach of social media posts has been shrinking for some time.  To encourage people to use paid advertising methods, posts now have very small organic reach.  The result is that users only see a fraction of what their connections post when browsing their feeds.  More and more, users are having to manually search for the content they want to see from the connections that they care about.  Each time a user interacts with the content that they see on their news feed, the social media site takes this into account to improve their experience in the future.

Understanding Facebook Algorithms

Facebook Algorithms demonstrate why social media marketing is more nuanced than posting alone.  In order to reach your desired audience without paying for a campaign, you have to understand Facebook’s algorithms.  Although nobody really knows the full details about the algorithms that are used, Facebook experts have gathered information on what they know.  Guides like this one give details of how the algorithm works and how you can make them play to your advantage.  The Facebook algorithm takes many factors into account including the recency of your post, relevance and your previous interaction with that friend.  These factors are used to decide whether a particular post shows up in your friend’s feed.  These algorithms ensure that only the most interesting content is displayed.  Facebook has clamped down on posts which contain spam and click bait to increase the quality of content displayed in the newsfeed.

Insightful and interesting content is preferred over a low-quality piece of content which tries too hard to make the user click through to a spammy post.  Ensuring that your posts are written naturally to appeal to a human audience is the best way to avoid penalties from Facebook.  An audience that engages with your content on a regular basis will improve your organic reach.

Users now have more control over what they see.  A Facebook user, for example, can hide a post in their news feed if it does not appeal to them.  They can also opt to have posts from specific authors appear at the top of their newsfeed.  When users show their dissatisfaction with content appearing in their feed the feedback they give impacts on content they see in the future.

Social Media Marketing:  Facebook Paid Advertising Campaigns

In order to reach out to the largest possible audience, you are now forced to invest in paid social media advertising campaigns.  Paid Facebook Advertising campaigns are simple to set up and provide you with an opportunity to reach out to people who may be interested in what you have to say.  They have some benefits compared with organic reach as you can specify exactly who you want to target with your content.  You can select your campaign goals, target demographic and budget restrictions when setting up your campaign.  When running Facebook ads campaigns you can also see the results of your campaign to measure their performance.  Social Media Examiner has provided a detailed guide considering the most effective ways to set up a Facebook ads campaign.

With a paid campaign you don’t have to compete for space with other organic content.  You can rise to the top of the newsfeeds where your ad is most relevant and likely to get results.  A growing number of businesses have used paid advertising in order to promote their content.  As competition for advertising space becomes more competitive, businesses have increased their ad spend on Facebook.

Summary

It would be great if we could all go viral and see our content spread like wildfire across the digital landscape.  However, the reality is that most of the content you post will only reach a limited audience.  Reading up on Facebook’s algorithms can give you an insight into the best ways to increase your organic reach, however, with the mountain of content that is uploaded to social media websites on a daily basis, you need to invest in paid advertising campaigns to see sustainable results.  You really can’t afford to neglect your social media marketing strategy.