Lori Lewis
By Lori Lewis, Jacobs Media
You no longer have to take it from me that people don’t want to be pitched by pages they have ‘liked’ when they scroll through their Facebook News Feeds. Mark Zuckerberg has thrown down the “spam gauntlet.”
In a vow to better protect his users from (unpaid) promotional noise, his latest message is clear: If you want to promote something, pay for it.
Starting next month, Facebook will start hiding status updates that are really promotional posts.
Facebook says this stems from users complaining more about posts from pages they have “liked,” than over actual ads they see. And it makes sense. When you see an ad, your tolerance level is higher for it. It’s clearly marked “sponsored” and expectations are met.
But when it’s a status update that feels like an ad, that’s when you’ve chipped away at the trust you were given by your audience. They didn’t “like” you just to be sold.
This is similar to the stops sets on our radio stations. There’s transparency when we stop the music or talk to play ads. That transparency elevates their tolerance level. But when we slide an endorsement in the middle of a talk break, we can often alienate a portion of the audience – leaving them feeling pitched, rather than entertained.
It’s interesting because we’re so careful about what we do on-air, but not so much what we say socially. We treat Facebook as an afterthought or this free promotional platform for what we want to say.
But it should never really be about us directly. It’s about what the fans want to hear.
Look at some of the common traits Facebook says make status updates feel like spam:
1. Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
2. Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes
3. Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads.
Facebook also offers visual examples of what they are talking about, such as this:
That post could easily be from any radio station: “Be sure to listen to us!”
If you really pay attention and really listen to Mark Zuckerberg – you’ll see Facebook has been trying to articulate that to brands for some time now.
It started about one a year ago when the company released the document, “Generating Business Results on Facebook.”
In it, they wrote that posts have become too promotional. As a result, organic (free) reach will decrease. And in order to “maximize delivery of your message in News Feed, your brand should consider using paid distribution.”
Then in June of this year, Facebook once again talked about paying to promote your brand due to declining organic (free) reach:
“Competition in the News Feed is increasing, becoming harder for any story to gain exposure.
Like TV, search, newspapers, radio and virtually every other marketing platform, Facebook is far more effective when businesses use paid media to help meet their goals.”
And just last month, Mark Zuckerberg held his first public live Q&A from Facebook Headquarters.
He shared insight into how they control content flow:
“For each person on Facebook, there’s an average of 1,500 different stories a day that they could see in their News Feed. So to ensure that users are always seeing the ‘highest quality content,’ they only see about 100 [to 300] of those 1,500 potential posts.
He was quick to point out that you don’t always have to pay to ensure your posts are some of the few fans actually see – your posts just have to be “compelling” enough to the audience.
And he’s right because posts that move people will find an audience whether you pay to reach them or not.
But that gets lost on a lot of people. They would rather blame Facebook for declining reach than for their own content and behavior shortcomings.
Social is a way of thinking, it’s not a trick.
It’s not about gaming fans to interact with us.
It’s about coming at content from their point of view, and personalizing acknowledgement.
It’s about proving our worth in their News Feeds by creating share-worthy experiences.
For just one example of what that looks like, Nike, a sponsor of Florida State University’s football program, posted this recently. Does this feel like an ad? Or does it feel like a message that resonates deeply?
This is what liquid content looks like – stories people crave; that hit them emotionally.
It’s a skill we need to work at every day.
For a radio example, check out WRIF/Detroit. The job that Mark Pennington, Andy Green and the rest of the team do is not only effective, but strategic.
They carved out a strategy for Facebook three years ago, but they also made sure the strategy complemented their culture. .
They know that strategy is one thing – but if you’re not feeding the culture of your brand socially – you’re wasting time. Culture should be at the core of everything you do.
It is with WRIF. Their posts are memorable socially because they come at content from what the fan wants to hear. They create shareable experiences, the most important thing you can do in this space.
And beyond being share-worthy every day – WRIF has real metrics to show why Facebook matters. Because they gently pull people off of Facebook with their “Man Cave” content that lives at wrif.com, they have substantially hiked the value of WRIF’s digital assets – the assets they own and sell.
WRIF is just one of many brands that continue to succeed on Facebook despite the never ending changes in “organic reach.”
Now more than ever, it’s time to focus on being more effective with Facebook. Here’s how you can do it:
1. Define Facebook’s purpose for your brand. Make sure it complements your station’s (or your show’s) culture.
2. Manage your brand’s tone of voice. In the same way you coach talent, there needs to be an understanding of the inflection and personality the station portrays socially.
3. Study what triggers reaction (and equally important, what doesn’t). Understanding the characteristics of content that drive sharing is critical. You can study this through Facebook’s Insights.
4. Know who you’re really talking to. In order to have an influencer strategy and build social interaction with fans, you need to watch the demographics of who’s actually interacting with you. You can find that in Facebook’s Insights, too.
5. Realize you’re interrupting. More times than not, brands – even when we like them – get in the way of our social lurking. If you keep that in mind before every single post, you’ll refine the message to prove your worth in the fans’ social lives.
The only way we reach anyone, paid or unpaid, is offering content that is worth sharing. Easier said than done.
Reach out to me anytime at lori@jacobsmedia.com.
