Do you have a Facebook page for your business?  Do you monitor the stats on the page?  If you’ve answered yes then I’m sure you’ve noticed a BIG drop-off in your post reach and page interaction the past 60-90 days.  At Driven Media Solutions we manage over 300 Social Media Pages for local businesses and in November we noticed a disturbing trend, Facebook posts were not being seen!

What’s happened?  Facebook has created an algorithm that only allows certain fans to see your posts.  No one is exactly sure what that winning formula is, but the top way to increase your chances are through fan engagement.  A few years ago the majority of your page fans saw your posts, but not anymore.  Advertising is another way to get your fans back, from what I see Facebook basically is forcing you to buy advertising.  They’ve not come out and said this, but if you read between the lines that’s whats happening.  This isn’t a terrible issue, after all Facebook has allowed thousands of businesses to build a great medium to market your business for FREE, but it would be great if you knew what was going on.  Below are a few suggestions and examples to help your page get seen more often by your fans and get your reach back up.

1.  Facebook Advertising – Like it or not, you need to allocate a budget for 2014 to either buy ads promoting your posts or your page.  You’ve been given a great advertising medium for free the past few years, now it’s time to pay.  CLICK HERE to see an example of a local small business spending less than $100 per month to promote their posts and the results they’ve seen on their website.  This company has been using Facebook ads on and off since June 2013.  In this example they saw 382 new visits to their website in the past month and the video ad has been watched 1,123 times and has generated a reach of 14,224. Keep in mind the demo picked for this ad is ultra targeted.  You can create great targets in your ads with demo, geographic and interests. 

2.  Contests– Facebook did make it easier to do contests in 2013.  They removed the rules about having contests within your posts and it’s really helped drive engagement and page traffic. Don’t be fooled though, you don’t need to have big prizes.  CLICK HERE to see a great example of the power of a $10 gift card!

3.  Local Content – What gets the attention of your audience?  In Cincinnati if your customers are sports fans there’s a PRETTY good chance a jab at a competitor will do the job.  CLICK HERE to see a post that did just that and reached over 37,000 people and had 200 shares.

4.  Pictures – Pictures are what they want you to post!  Product pictures and pictures of happy customers are great.  But the ones that really get attention are funny pictures.  Remember, people are on Facebook to catch up, get a laugh and communicate with their friends.  Even better is a funny picture that ties in with your products.  Here’s one of my favorites we did in 2012 CLICK HERE.  This picture got 49 shares for a small 1 location business with less than 500 fans.

5.  Loyalty Programs – Find a program that your fans can participate in while earning points towards products.  We’ve partnered with Boost Chatter on a few of our client’s pages and seen increased engagement.  Fans earn points for liking, commenting and posting on your page.  Once they reach a goal they get a reward, CLICK HERE for more info.

6.  Follow Others – There’s a feature on Facebook called “interests” that allows you to follow businesses on Facebook without being fans of the pages.  This lets you to follow competitors or other pages and not have anyone know.  You’ll get an update daily with all of the pages’s posts that day.  If you log into Facebook you’ll see this option on the left hand column below the pages you manage.  You’ll get your best ideas from local and out of town companies just like you and you’ll be able to watch their posts and see which ones will drive engagement.

The 4 businesses highlighted above are all different sizes and industries.  If you put in place these 6 tactics and you continue to offer compelling, interesting content to your fans, you’ll have continued success using Facebook to market your business.  Remember there are hundreds if not thousands of factors that go into the algorithm, so keep plugging away, watching your metrics and find out what’s working.