Facebook is like all other businesses: it needs to adapt to an ever-changing marketing environment. I see FaceBook like those big commercial fishing boats off the coast, casting their nets far and wide, capturing anything they can.
FaceBook are the masters of online fishing, they have captured over 5 billion users!
They have allowed businesses to build prominence on their platform over the last 5 or so years. Equally, consumers are plugged into FaceBook; far many more than cigarettes or fizzy drinks. Many are addicted, checking their Facebook news feed constantly, often whilst otherwise engaged, living in an online world.
The creation of phone zombies by the proliferation of social media on smartphones has not been lost on business, hence the noose tightening around your businesses wallet.
In January 2018, FaceBook made some significant changes to the way the news feed works. Firstly, you’re going to see less public content like post from businesses and media and brands and the ones that you will see will be more trustworthy and will be more relevant to you as a Facebook user.
There will be more emphasis on local news which of course is closer to where you are at any given time so obviously Facebook will be looking at your location and posting news to you that is close to you.
That can work for Self Storage
Why have all these changes been made? Facebook has been accused of promoting fake news and this is their attempt to make changes to clean their news feed up. These changes will result in about 20% less news on Facebook.
High-quality news will be featured more than low-quality news.
Changes made by FaceBook essentially spell the end of business grade organic posts reaching your followers without you paying. Posting information on your Facebook page may not necessarily reach any of the followers of your page, a tough call if you have a lot of followers without stumping up some cash.
The chances of your posts being seen by your followers will increase if there are interactions such as shares or comments.
How does this play out for Self Storage businesses? Simply, you must consider FaceBook to be like any other advertising medium and you cannot expect to get a free ride from posting information on your business page and expect your followers to see this information any longer for free. This time was coming…
FaceBook advertising is one of your options to get your message to your followers along with “Sponsored Posts” FaceBook has powerful tools to target your sales message to market segments including local followers. Organically posting material hoping that your FaceBook followers will see it will no longer work effectively for Facebook businesses.
Working effectively with your digital marketer will ensure that your message gets to as many targeted people as possible at the smallest cost. The free ride is over!
Beware, this is work for those who know how to make posts work on FaceBook. Get it wrong and you may as well be fishing for nothing!
Author Bio: Dallas is the founder of R6 Digital. He has worked in Self Storage for close to 30 years and is a regular SSAA contributor and regularly speaks at Storage events.