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Facebook Update Reduces Page Like Counts

March 18, 2015/0 Comments/in Marketing, Social Media /by Kristi Church

First–your’e not going crazy. Your Page Likes were higher yesterday or even last week than they are this morning–it’s okay. You’ve done nothing wrong.

Second–earlier this year, Instagram created an update that eliminated fake accounts which resulted in a huge drop in followers for celebrities like Rapper, Akon—who lost over 56% of his Instagram audience. It was a good thing—the actual followers that were left on IG were most likely there due to organic growth—not fake spambot accounts.

New Facebook Algorithm Is Here

In the next coming weeks, if you own a business Facebook page, you’re likely to see a small dip in the amount of “likes” your page has. In case you’re wondering why–it’s not because you posted something offensive or followers all of a sudden don’t like your page any longer. Community managers and admins work very hard to engage the right audience and grown Page Likes organically, but unlike the change on Instagram, this update isn’t about fake accounts, only those that are inactive.

As I mentioned in 4 Reasons Facebook Will Remain a Powerhouse in 2015, Facebook is always moving toward optimizing the user experience and this algorithm change is no different. They are removing two types of accounts from business Page Like totals; deactivated and memorialized accounts.

“To make audience data even more meaningful for businesses, we’re updating the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts,” the company explained in a blog post. “This change ensures that data on Facebook is consistent and up-to-date.”

I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself that it might be a no-brainer that once an account was actually deactivated it would naturally be removed from your Page Likes—apparently not so.

This Facebook algorithm change is going to affect those deactivated accounts that are done so voluntarily, but that aren’t actually deleted from Facebook. Should the owner come back in and reactivate the account, the new Page Like will reappear. So, those wanting to step away from Facebook and come back later can do so undisturbed.

What to Expect

Most business Pages will only see a slight drop in Page Likes—possibly less than 2-5%. That’s not much in the grand scheme of things and this change actually keeps us all in the know and belief that those that are following our communities are there because they really want to see our content and care about the engagement we’re creating—which is GREAT!

About Us: Infinite Reach Agency specializes in advanced Facebook marketing through ad placement and daily social engagement. If you have questions on this topic or have questions on how to implement a proper Facebook ad campaign, contact us for a complimentary 30 minute consultation! We’re happy to help!

Facebook's New Call to Action Button is Kryptonite to Marketers

New Facebook Feature Is Kryptonite Against Change

February 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized /by Kristi Church

Facebook. One of my favorite subjects. It’s not my end all marketing tool, but it is a part of a larger strategy that I use within my plan. Like most marketers and people I know, Facebook and I have a love-hate relationship. Some days I absolutely love it…other days I want to bang my head on my keyboard hoping to knock some sense into my brain. The chase is on to find the golden key to unlock the right engagement for best results and just when we think we’ve got it, Facebook ups their game to have us all scrambling again.

There is one thing I absolutely love about Facebook. They are constantly working to strike a balance between keeping their users happy (both social and professional) while increasing their bottom line. Every time they come up with something that might affect marketers in a less than desirable way…(poof!)…they pop out a new feature that gets us all excited again!

For instance…organic reach. In what seems like a strategic 2 year plan on their part, Facebook primed us for the days ahead starting in 2012 when they first announced the paid reach concept. Chatter struck up in forums of how evil Facebook was for starting to charge—and we read conversations for and against it on both sides of the fence—at the end of the day, people were upset that they might have to pay in order to use what they want as a free service.

I get it. I want free too. But truly, nothing in this world is really free. Eventually we’re going to have to pay for what we want and frankly, I’m thankful that Facebook hasn’t adopted other means for making us pay such as going to a monthly subscription rate. While the negative effects for them would have been drastic and huge, they surely could have done that. Rather, they took cues from Google (okay, maybe not…which was first the chicken or the egg?) and developed changes through their algorithms that keep us hopping.

Similar to that of search engine optimization; starting your business, getting your website up and running and clicking on your neon open sign certainly doesn’t mean you’ll get found on the internet. You need SEO to be found. That may also include SEM (search engine marketing), or Pay per Click ads for a little boost. Over the past five years we’ve come to understand that marketing has changed, especially if we want to gain top-of-the-mind awareness.

**One thing is certain, Facebook is always changing…..**

I’ll touch on some old news for a moment. They have created algorithms that, with their announcement last November, are quickly moving away from organic reach to encourage more paid advertising, which makes it more difficult for us to reach our audience. We knew it was coming so it wasn’t really a surprise. In fact, I really started noticing the effects of this change in mid-January. Again, just because we have followers and are active at posting great content…in most cases you’ll need to be on the pay to play bandwagon to have your posts seen by those that like your page and want to support your business. Early adopters are embracing the change, others aren’t there yet. The key is to develop a boosting strategy for posts that you want to have covered. It should become part of your Facebook marketing plan.

Facebook saves the day!

Here’s a positive development to off-set that announcement. Facebook has given us a new way to engage those that follow us with the new Call-to-Action (CTA) button! Yes, I am enamored with how Facebook is going to allow us to drive traffic to a landing page so that we can convert more potential clients and creatively use this platform to grow our own bottom line as well! Could the new Call-to-Action button become the kryptonite in our tool box that helps us gain more qualified engagement? The answer is YES! Especially when used as part of a strategic ad campaign!

I mentioned in a recent blog post the “4 Reasons Facebook Will Remain a Social Powerhouse in 2015”, that Facebook is great at building trust, but they’re also great at continuing to develop what page admins want. In fact, they want “to release features that will help drive business objectives to align with a business’s goals”. The new Call-to-Action button is a perfect example of that! Woot! Woot!

Here’s how it works:

Next to the “Like” button at the top of your Facebook page sits the Create a Call-to-Action. You can see in the example below that Sign Up is one of 7 different Call-to-Action buttons that are available. This makes it possible to set up your CTA to work congruently with another campaign to help drive clicks where you want them.

Take for example this 3 week test performed by Brian Kim from the famous online retailer Dollar Shave Club. “The Sign Up Call-to-Action delivered a 2.5x higher conversion rate versus other comparable social placements aimed to drive new user acquisition.” That’s great news! Personally and professionally I’m encouraged and I can’t wait to do some testing of my own in the near future!

So.. the 7 options for your CTA are:

Sign Up
Book Now
Contact Us
Use App
Play Game
Show Now
Watch Video

All great options when combining an ad campaign to drive engagement or even as a stand-alone way to promote your business page. The new Call-to-Action button is rolling out to Pages now through the end of 2015.

So as we are all excited and wrapped up in creating our new CTA, let’s try not forget the fact that if we want more than mere 5 followers to see our posts, we still have to pay for that coverage. At least until we pay our ad bill…ouch!

About Us: In addition to our other services, Infinite Reach Agency specializes in advanced Facebook marketing through ad placement and daily social engagement. If you have questions on this topic or have questions on how to implement a proper Facebook ad campaign, contact us for a complimentary 30 minute consultation! We’re happy to help!

Feel free to use this image in your marketing or better yet, share it on Pinterest!

4 Reasons Facebook Will Remain a Social Powerhouse in 2015

January 7, 2015/0 Comments/in Branding, Social Media, Uncategorized /by Kristi Church

With Facebook announcing its Q4 2014 results in just a few short weeks, here’s look at why this media giant will remain the powerhouse in 2015 when it comes to social media.

Facebook is Effective at Building Trust

I remember the day it happened. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I was among them. As we all sat around our computers, Facebook users squawked as soon as paid ads hit their feeds at the beginning of 2012. With that said, paid ads have been extremely successful resulting thousands of dollars of revenue gains since they’ve hit the scene. However, brand awareness and trust has been built on the platform with big companies growing their audiences and being more relevant than ever. In a study produced by Simply Measured of top 100 companies, there were a collective 1.1 billion fans and 77 percent of those companies and individual audiences of greater than one million fans.”

Fast forward to 2015 and Facebook fans are now accustomed to viewing branded content more than ever. Take that one step further. They’re proven to become more trusting to those large brands by becoming fans themselves in support of the brands they follow.

Those ads weren’t such a bad thing after all!

Larger Fan Base = User Recommendations

For companies, brand loyalty is the result of all that good trust juju that’s being built everyday on Facebook and other social media. It’s no secret that people want to connect to the companies and public figures they love by understanding them socially and emotionally. It’s as close to being personal with them as they can get by easily connecting at no cost—a huge benefit on both sides!

However, this kind of brand loyalty and growing fan base also translates into user recommendations. Think of this as the digital word-of-mouth if you will. As of January 2, 2015, aside from Facebook itself, Coca-Cola and YouTube round out the Top 25 Facebook Pages for highest number of fans. On the far right of this chart you’ll see a 1-10 rating on how likely a fan is to recommend the page to friends. More raving fans translates into more engagement and more of a following. Woot! So.. there’s no time like the present to grow your Facebook fans!

Facebook Balances Brands and What Traditional Users Want to See

Facebook relies on users and their engagement to grow their financials. So, posts that are more engaging are the posts that Facebook juices in order to drive that engagement. One thing that Facebook is great at is listening to its audience. While there’s brand loyalty and fan base growth on Facebook, this came loud and clear in a recent Facebook survey that users don’t want to see their newsfeed spammed with sales pitches.

So Facebook is adapting. Yes, again. It’s good news for users, and not so great for marketers. New 2015 algorithm updates reflect different outcomes for brands as engagement remains their focus. What this means for branding is that there will be even less visibility to those posts that solely push people to enter promotions, to buy a product, enter promotions and or sweepstakes or reuse of existing content from ads. Posts with a hard sell take the back seat! (See example below).

example of bad executed fb ad under new 2015 algorithm changes

Facebook’s example of what NOT to do with an ad!

How they’re accomplishing this is that Facebook is simply lessening the competition in the News Feed so that more relevant content gets seen. According to a recent blog post, Facebook remarked “This change is about giving people the best Facebook experience possible and being responsive to what they’ve told us”. Kuddos to you for listening, Facebook!

Facebook Continues to Develop What Page Admins Want

Part of this new January 2015 Facebook update, businesses that have Places Facebook Pages, which simply means having a brick and mortar location, admins are becoming a bit happier! They can now toot their horns a little louder by adding maps, ratings and check-ins to their page. This awesome update gives users more assurance about local brands/businesses they follow while also upping their street cred!

No matter what kind of changes that Facebook is going to make, businesses everywhere are going to stay the course, post their content and pay for ads to be in front of their audiences. They key is going to be relevancy with a focus on giving your audiences the info they want without being perceived as giant spam machine. So.. quit spewing mindless content so Facebook AND your users will love you! Their loyalty will be proven in your Facebook “Likes”.