Facebook Tips for 2018 | Small business

15 Feb Facebook Tips for 2018 | Small business

First it’s important to know what I mean when I refer to the ‘Facebook Algorithm’. The algorithm refers to how Facebook is pretty much a robot trying to learn as much about you as possible, to then sell this information to advertisers. Everything that you like, engage with or share, is used and sold. And in return Facebook finds more things to show you that they think you’ll like.

For businesses this has always been some sort of set back, as Facebook recognises that people on social media would rather be entertained than sold to. In short, personal profiles will have a wider reach than business pages every time.

Here are some quick tips that will help you make the best out of this algorithm despite it being a little more difficult to work with for branded pages.

Engage with your own posts:

Engage with comments on your posts, liking them and replying to your followers. Make sure you tag them so that they receive a notification about the post – they may have more to say and the more comments, the wider the reach of your post.

Get in quick:

Generally you have about 20 minutes to gain likes before Facebook’s algorithm decides that your post isn’t that great and will hide it from people’s feed. So make sure you’re timing your posts to when people are active. Timings are all fluid and depend a lot on your audience – so make sure you’re regularly checking out what times of the day work best for you.

Encourage Action:

One way to get more people commenting and engaging with your post is to ask questions or generate action such as “Tag who you’d do this with!” and “Where’s your favourite place to visit?”.

Create and share video content:

Zuckerberg knows that video content is king. So he’s happy for the algorithm to help video content get greater reach over text content.

Create authentic content:

There’s something to be said for an immaculate social media page with well-designed content, professional photography and videography. However, if you’re heading into the overly designed-stock photo repetition category it could be worth easing back, as people love original content and can recognise stock imagery as advertising – making them skim past.

Show you’re worth liking:

Show users that your business is worthy for a like or follow by looking like a worthy business! Have your logo at the correct specs as your profile picture. And make sure your cover photo is branded, attention grabbing and regularly changes.