We’ve all been there. You’re managing your company’s Facebook page, whether as part of a comprehensive strategy of targeted social media messaging or just because you felt like keeping in touch with your fans. Then the notifications pop up.
“Pages like yours that have boosted similar posts have seen a blah blah blah increase in interactions.” “For just $X, you could boost this post and reach Y-hundred more users.”
For those of us who remember the old days of Facebook, we knew the free ride wouldn’t last forever. Eventually Zuckerberg and his army were going to realize how much money they were leaving on the table just letting us use the platform as a free communications channel. And when it came, those of us who were there can remember that first post that seemed to have been seen by no one. Because, essentially, it was.
Facebook had learned how to limit distribution for business pages, but more importantly they learned that they could charge businesses to remove that limit. You can complain all you want, but business is business and it only makes sense that Facebook would charge for their services (after all, don’t you do the same for yours?).
After all, we’re talking about the $200 billion global market for digital advertising. Facebook would be nuts to not get a piece of that.
Which brings us to today, in which Facebook’s boosted posts have become such a massive revenue juggernaut, and such a key part of so many marketers’ ad spend, that even minute changes to that process can cause ripples across nearly every industry.
The No-Boost List
Take, for example, the recent change in Facebook’s policy which limited the types of posts a business could boost. The official explanation offered by Facebook stated that, “In order to ensure businesses get the most value from their Facebook ads, we are removing the ability to boost some post types that are rarely used and are not tied to advertiser objectives. This change will allow us to improve and expand our most effective ad products, and help advertisers identify solutions to help them reach their goals.”
Offering a list of posts that would no longer be eligible to boost, Facebook presented this as a way of streamlining the process (after all, why would you boost a post stating that your business was watching a TV show anyway?) but marketers were quick to point out a second, possibly more beneficial, side effect. Boosting some of these types of posts (such as an update to a profile picture) might put your message in front of more people, but it doesn’t generate any kind of tangible ROI.
By eliminating these posts from contention for boosting, it forces businesses to focus on the type of content that generates less in terms of vanity metrics (e.g. likes and comments) and more on tangible results. As evidence, boosted posts now include a call to action button letting your Facebook followers Learn More, Contact Us, Sign Up, Download and Shop Now.
The result is an ad spend that delivers more bang for your buck, even as it limits your ability to boost posts.
Make it Count
While there are obvious benefits to laying down money to boost a post (wider reach, a more concrete call to action), there’s still something to be said for good old-fashioned organic social media.
Whether it’s starting a conversation with your customers or building a community, there’s still plenty you can do to build your brand online. The interactions that are bred from these posts, the deeper connections you can make with your customers, must still be an important part of your overall social media strategy.
It’s important, though, to remember a few rules to really make this organic social media content work in your favor. First, listen to your audience. The same people you target with your regular marketing efforts are the people you’re targeting with social media. If your typical customer isn’t on Snapchat, then it’s a waste of your time.
Second, watch your competitors. See where they are, and learn from their successes and failures. Past performance is not guarantee of future success, but seeing what the other guys are doing can be a pretty good barometer of where you want to be and don’t want to be.
Third, always be in beta. A key to successful social media interaction is keeping your audience engaged enough that they’ll continue to hear your message. That requires some upkeep in terms of taking in feedback, gauging reaction and adjusting your message accordingly to keep your customers engaged.
Of course, even with a solid approach to your organic posting you’ll still want to pay that money to boost some posts. And why not? Organic social media messaging can have an extraordinary upshot, but paid social media messaging gives you a fairly predictable return on investment and lets your target your audience with a laser focus.
Balancing the messaging between the two is key.
Never forget that some of your customers will see both in the course of scrolling through their feed, so making sure your messaging is consistent across both is crucial. Try to view them as your customers view them and make sure they complement one another, both in general message and in tone. This will not only make for a more seamless message for your audience, it could also create organic messages with a higher engagement rate, which are less expensive to boost.
Need to learn more about sending the right social media message, whether paid or free? Just give us a call at 904.359.4318, or fill out our contact form.
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