The future of Facebook is discussed time after time. When used well – is a fookin’ powerful – beast of a – platform, and I’d love to give you x5 Facebook strategies to implement [like, effective immediately] for 2021 FB success [and beyond].
In most of TDP’s workshops, folx are surprised to learn that around 76% of TDP’s social conversions come from Facebook [organically, this shifts again in a positive direction when we factor in paid attribution as well].
Often? They don’t believe me, which is ok … because I just bring up our Google Analytics [we’re a radically transparent brand, so you better believe we – quite literally – open up our GA in front of y’all, and show you, well, basically everything].
It really brings home the fact that followers are a vanity metric [and a shiny, sexy one at that, but still … #vanitymetric]. And actually, it’s your community [and your online community, and our FB online community] that’ll keep your business in business.
Facebook very-much-so keeps TDP in business, month on month, year on year. And that’s a little bit surreal to our workshop attendees because they’re like, “but you have 40,000 more followers on Instagram”
Now, to the x5 juicy strategies I promised.
In 2021? Less is more on this platform
Makes sense, right? With 11.4 million Facebook users in Australia alone, FB HQs has the almighty task of delivering a helluva lot of content every-single-minute of its FB algorithm day … and so simple mathematics screams to us [and the FB algorithm screams similarly, believe me] to share less [organically] if you want to be seen more.
Pages that used to get away with seriously frequent content sharing to this platform have seen their reach/engagements/impressions almost halve, and still they plug away with x9 posts shared to their FB page per day and wonder why the reach is dryin’ up.
In 2021? You’re bein’ “noisy” if you keep showing up to Facebook as if it’s circa 2010 where we could all get away with content sharing schedules that make 2021 social media marketers weep [seriously, we audibly welp at your nine-times-per-day content marketing schedule].
And so for this reason? You need to stop right now and decide on your posting frequency
Because you now know that less is more, so perhaps that means [like us] you’re stripping that content sharing schedule back [and dramatically so], e.g we stripped ours back by a whopping 50% and saw engagement increase tenfold [effective immediately].
We’ve now reduced our FB content schedule from twice daily posting to once daily, but for a lot of the brands we build strategies for? … we’re saying “3-4 times per week is more than enough, and impactful enough”.
We can get away with a slightly higher sharing schedule because we have x2 really big [and really powerful] private FB groups where we can share content into from our main page.
Leverage the power of niche, special interest groups
And so this brings me beautifully to my next point, which is the power [and importance] of leveraging niche, special interest groups on Facebook, i.e private Facebook groups.
Every single week that I map content out for TDP’s Facebook strategy? … I highlight 2-3 posts within that sharing schedule that I know I’m going to share into 4-5 special interest groups that would benefit from my having shared that post into the group for reading, or for value-adding, or even for promotional content [hardly ever, tbh].
Imagine we have a client who sells Vegan skincare, right? And we happen to be in a Facebook group for vegan women in Melbourne [which has 26k members within it]. We might take a blog post that client has written and shared to their main Facebook page, and we might subsequently share it to that niche vegan group saying something like “great read”.
We haven’t shared promotional content [ick!], but we’ve instead elevated that piece of content [and subsequently? The brand as well] to a group that’s the perfect group for that brand to have more visibility on their blog.
It’s for this reason that I recommend thinking about what groups might suit you being a member of [and yes, on behalf of your brand] / find out what their rules are around sharing / share accordingly.
The future of Facebook is private, and private FB groups are such a celebration of this [new] direction … so leverage the power of those niche, special interest groups, yea?
Incorporate video marketing into your content strategy
Nothing makes me more hot under the collar than a Facebook content strategy with regular video sharing into its content marketing mix.
I lie, Harry Styles in an open-chest/purple fluffy scarf combo has me absolutely hot under the collar … but regular video incorporated into your Facebook content strategy? A close second.
Video, because algorithm loves it.
Video, because people love it [because they have short attention spans].
Video, because we’re wired for video now.
Video, because it’s almost guaranteed reach and engagement.
[and I hate the word “guaranteed”].
Video, because nothing lands you regularly in an organic FB news feed the way that video incorporated into your content marketing strategy does. #pinkypromise
Design content around dwell time
Which helps me to finish off on something I have always designed good content marketing strategies around … a huge focus on regularly clocking up “dwell time” from social media consumers.
Dwell time means “how long someone spent consuming that post” [if you’re a visual soul like me? Picture a sand timer starting the minute they stop their scroll and land on your content, and it’s measuring how long they actually stay there].
So, how do I clock up dwell time in Facebook-land? Well, I;
- Regularly share video content [no longer than 30 seconds, tbh]
- Weave digital storytelling into my captions, where possible
- Load carousels that encourage people to swipe through
- Kean into value-added educational content [that encourages a person to read from start to finish]
You get the gist, right? … Facebook measures how long a person spends on your content and so it’s for this reason that I ensure that I’m clocking up “time spent on post” regularly from TDP’s FB consumers.
—
Has this been helpful?
Any [extra] strategy tips you’d recommend?
You’ll notice I haven’t even begun to unpack paid strategies on Facebook [a blog post for another day, and we’ve written many, tbh] … because I still see so much power in organic sharing on FB, and experience the benefits of this regularly.
—
I could spend all year talking about how to create powerful Facebook strategies, and I’d still have more to say [ya gurl loves facebook, ha!].
Join me for our next one day strategy deep dive, where we – quite literally – build out your Facebook strategy with you.