Is This The End of Facebook...Again?
Small businesses will struggle to meet Facebook’s new demands
Social media is a great channel by which to communicate a brand’s message and image, increase brand awareness and engage with consumers; however, small and medium sized businesses can no longer simply rely on the big hitters online to spread the word. Facebook pages’ organic reach is in decline with a 6% drop in active usage, and the social network warns that we shouldn’t expect this pattern to reverse.Jason Mander, head of trends at GlobalWebIndex, said: “While people are still visiting Facebook, they’re using it for fewer things – seeing it more as a place to view their newsfeed and see content collated from across the web and less as a place to interact with their friends.”
Contributing to Facebook’s decline must surely be the rise of Snapchat and WhatsApp; users, particularly younger users, are favouring these instant messaging mobile apps, with Snapchat and WhatsApp occupying the number one and three spots respectively in terms of global use. Why? Because these mobile apps are simpler, add-free and more private than Facebook.
This isn’t unusual, it merely seems to be par for the course for big social media companies. Initially, the new platform presents a great free opportunity (emphasis being on ‘free’), but as it grows in popularity the focus becomes on those who are willing to pay for it.
It is important for businesses to remember that, like Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm, Facebook’s filters are based on quality, which is determined by better engagement and sharing activity. In the case of Google, the Hummingbird algorithm looks for natural language which is well-written without typos or grammatical errors – high quality content on relevant and reputable webpages. If you run a company blog, look to post regularly aiming for at least three times a week. YouTube is owned by Google, so a YouTube video embedded into your blog post will act favourably. It’s also a good idea to get involved with guest blogging.
Facebook’s declining activity and sign ups mark the end of an illusion: the misconception that all a company needed was a Facebook page with some cool photos.
This looks like bad news for small businesses who are finding that Facebook simply isn’t as effective anymore, unless you’re paying for it. According to the figures, brands average a reach of 6.15% of their audiences organically, and having over 500,000 Likes can ensure a reach of only 2.11% - compared to a year ago, this is a huge decrease in effectiveness where the average reach was twice as much.
Katie Rowley
Recent graduate and now interning as content editor, when she's not
writing articles Katie can quite likely be found festival-ing,
holiday-ing or reading a book (dedicated English student that she is). Follow her @KatieAtSMF.
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Is This The End of Facebook...Again?
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Wednesday, July 09, 2014
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