In 2009, Facebook started down the road of being a marketing platform for businesses with the roll-out of Pages. Since then, Pages has become a second website for companies. Pages have become so effective and feature-rich that today many small businesses are abandoning the creation of websites and are using Pages exclusively. Apart from using Pages to promote and market their business, eCommerce functionality can be added.
Given this, the ongoing tweaks to the News Feed algorithms are problematic. The social network is prioritizing "meaningful" conversations between friends and family over stories from pages. This effort started in 2017 and is accelerating. To make matters worse, the recent uproar about privacy issues has driven Facebook and other social networks to examine their paid advertising programs. Changes being made will most likely reduce the reach of paid ads.
Social Media Marketers are making the best of the changes by developing services to exploit News Feed algorithms. The argument is that it now takes a professional social media marketer to generate acceptable reach and engagement on a Page. So far, analytics seem to show that professionally managed Pages are not losing reach and engagement as drastically as Page's self-managed.
What's the solution? The same as always. In the history of technology, staying ahead of the curve is the smart approach. So what is the fastest growing application? What new application is getting the most subscribers and active users in your target demographic? These are the type of questions you should be asking, and then working towards getting answers. Staying with Facebook Pages as your key social media marketing tool is okay, as long as you are also exploring and trying out a social media platform that supports your marketing strategy.
360.320.0777
Port Angeles, WA
Island Internet Presence Consulting, LLC dba Port Angeles Web Design