The beauty of Facebook was its simplicity. Yes, I said was. Once upon a time the social networking site was free from ads, spam and countless brand pages asking users to "like" them. This pure simplicity of Facebook was summed up perfectly in the hit movie "The Social Network," which, for those of you who missed it, depicts the creation of today's Facebook empire.
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The beauty of Facebook was its simplicity. Yes, I said was. Once upon a time the social networking site was free from ads, spam and countless brand pages asking users to "like" them. This pure simplicity of Facebook was summed up perfectly in the hit movie "The Social Network," which, for those of you who missed it, depicts the creation of today's Facebook empire.
Billion-Dollar Business
"Facebook is cool," Sean Parker, Facebook Inc.'s first president, says in the movie. "You don't want to ruin it with ads, because ads aren't cool. You don't even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars."
If a billion dollars is cool, Facebook is certainly very cool today. When Facebook went public in 2012 it was valued at $104 billion dollars. Although the problems with its IPO were well-publicized, in 2011 alone, the social networking site generated $3.7 billion in revenue-yes, billion with a "b." That's nice if your name is Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder. But for Facebook brand page managers like me, Facebook is becoming increasingly less cool.
As the site grew from an idea in a college dorm room to a global phenomenon, so did its business plan. Facebook now has more streams of revenue than ever before. Outside advertisers, Facebook brand-page advertisements, promoted posts, games, apps-you name it, Facebook is finding a way to charge us for it. And this complicates the way we use the site to promote our respective brands.
Gone are the days when a small business or grassroots organization could quickly compile a large number of fans and reach them all at once. Instead, Facebook is ruled by an algorithm called EdgeRank that determines which Facebook users see which of your posts. Maximizing your Facebook page's effectiveness starts and ends with understanding EdgeRank.
Users Put on Edge
In an article featured on EdgeRankChecker.com, a Facebook ad representative described EdgeRank like this: A person's Facebook "feed is optimized to show users the posts they are most likely to engage with, where engagement is defined as clicking, liking, commenting, or sharing the post-or in the case of offers, claiming the offer."
Facebook will tell you EdgeRank is meant to improve users' Facebook experience. It shows users more content they tend to engage with and less that they don't. But this is hurting brand pages. Depending on where you look, the number of people an average post reaches is down anywhere from 25-50 percent since the launch of EdgeRank. You can no longer post something on your page and expect a majority of your fans to see it. If a person hasn't engaged with one of your posts recently, your content may no longer be appearing in their news feed at all.
The only way to guarantee reaching all of the people who "like" your page is by promoting your post, which costs money. Again, here's the whole "less cool" side of Facebook.
Keeping Up Appearances
There are some things you can do to ensure your Facebook page stays relevant. Keep in mind that ideally, you're reaching people in their news feeds and not relying on your fans to visit your page itself. Studies show that up to 96 percent of fans don't return to a brand's Facebook page after initial engagement.
In order for your posts to reach more people, first concentrate on generating engagement for those who are seeing your content. Engagement is clicking, liking, commenting or sharing the post. The more engaging your content, the more likely others are to see it. Additionally, EdgeRank assigns a different "weight" to each post. Photos and videos carry the most "weight," while text-only status updates carry the least.
Here are some tips to boost your engagement numbers. It's important to remember that different things work for different pages. Don't be afraid to experiment with types of posts, posting time and posting frequency.
Post photos: Research shows photos get as much as 20 times more engagement than other posts. Especially in a visual industry like wood flooring, showing your fans rather than telling them is a great way to draw more attention to your content.
Create photo albums: If a picture is worth a thousand words, think how many words an entire photo album is worth. Complete a new project you're particularly proud of? Take some pictures and post them to an album. People are more likely to click on it to view other pictures in the album and boost your engagement.
Longer text: Another option is to have posts with longer text to the point where Facebook adds a "See more" link on the post. This is risky because many users are turned off by long posts. However, longer posts can bait people into clicking the "See more" link that appears. If someone clicks that, it counts as engagement and, again, makes a post more likely to reach them in the future.
Or ... try shorter text: Just to prove there are no hard and fast rules, keeping posts short has also proven to drive engagement. According to postrocket.com, "Posts between 100 and 250 characters get 60 percent more likes, comments and shares than posts over 250 characters."
Posting frequency: Global communications agency Ogilvy and Mather suggests "two posts per day of sound, sight or motion (audio, photo, video). Brands doing a text-only post at 10 a.m., and then another text-only post at 1 p.m. are not using the new algorithm to their advantage. Posts in this timeframe and delivery method cannibalize one another by overlapping." Too busy to be on Facebook all day? Schedule posts in advance on Facebook by clicking the clock icon in the bottom left of the box where you post content. Or schedule posts through a free service like TweetDeck, HootSuite or Buffer.
Get creative: Don't be afraid to think outside the box. Some of our most popular posts on our Hardwood Floors page (www.facebook.com/WoodFloorBusiness) are cartoon images we created on www.someecards.com.
As Facebook continues to change the way it works, brand page managers will have to continue to adapt to stay relevant. While there is no guaranteed route to Facebook success, hopefully these tips will have your brand page racking up as many "likes" and comments as possible. In turn, it could help your business, and sooner or later it could be you joining Mark Zuckerberg in the Facebook all-star club. And I think we can all agree that would definitely be cool.
Michael Gaio is social media manager at Madison, Wis.-based AB Media Inc., the parent company of Wood Floor Business. Be sure you "like" WF on Facebook at www.facebook.com/WoodFloorBusiness.
