Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 4

December 14, 2020January 21, 2021

Business Marketing Tips for 2021

Kicking off 2021 with a “refreshed” marketing plan for your business

As we settle in to 2021, there’s never been a better time than right now to start planning your company’s comprehensive marketing plan than right now.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand why a marketing plan is important for your business. In short, over 50% of all consumers go online to research a company or its products before making a purchasing decision — meaning if you’re not capitalizing on a comprehensive marketing plan for your small business, you could be missing out on potential conversions.

Social media for your business

In 2021, it will be incredibly vital that every small business have a social media presence of some sort. And as a business owner, you probably understand that your company needs social media, but are having trouble navigating some of the finer details such as what platforms to use and how to optimize your engagement, among others. Here are some of our social media resources for small business owners:

Utilizing email to reach your customers

Email marketing is a nearly unmatched way to increase your store’s exposure — over 99% of consumers open their email at least once daily, according to HubSpot. Even more than just increasing exposure, email marketing allows you to present more purchase opportunities than any other form of marketing.

Is your website setup properly?

Today, companies aren’t just competing with local competition. Online companies of all sizes are trying to take a piece of the your industry’s pie, and it is up to you to stay relevant in an increasingly diverse landscape. One way companies can gain new customers or regain those they’ve lost to the online giants is through ensuring their websites are up to date for search engine optimization, or SEO.

Other resources

At SmartSolutions, our team can help assess your company’s marketing strategies and efforts and help you create a plan a comprehensive marketing plan for your business today.

Contact our team today to get your free consultation!

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

October 14, 2020January 13, 2021

Best Social Media Platforms for Your Business

In 2020, every company needs to have some sort of social media presence, that’s not debatable. And as a business owner, you probably understand that your company needs social media, but are having trouble navigating some of the finer details such as what platforms to use and how to create and size images, among others.

First, as a business owner, it’s vital you understand why a social media presence is an integral piece to your company’s marketing strategy. Nearly 42% of the world’s population, or more than 3.2 billion people (and growing), are active on social media each and every day — thus creating a seemingly limitless landscape of possibilities when it comes to marketing your company to a specific audience.

1. Set your goals and determine your audience

If you’re just deciding to get your company’s social presence going, odds are you’ve asked yourself this question at least once before.

Before selecting your company’s first social channel(s), it’s important to identify your target audience and overall goals. Is your goal to sell more product? Or drive awareness to specific events? When it comes to your audience selection — are you looking to reach as many people as possible? Or maybe you’re looking to target a specific demographic? Or, more specifically, even a subset of that demographic?

These questions above are what you really need to focus on before deciding to take the plunge and selecting a social media channel for your business. Without identifying your goals and audience, social media can become a very time-consuming task of scheduling hundreds of posts. But by narrowing down your goals, it becomes easy to identify the perfect two or three social platforms for your business.

2. Select the appropriate social channel(s)

If you have identified your company’s need for social media, and you’ve already identified your target audience and overall objectives, congratulations — you are already miles ahead of many business owners around the world. Now, it’s time to compare those goals with each social channel’s primary strengths. The social channels listed below are ranked in their popularity with businesses when it comes to marketing.

Facebook — If you’re looking to maximize your advertising money, as well as reach a much broader audience, Facebook is the perfect social channel for your company. Most companies would (and should) make Facebook one of their first selections, simply for the size of the audience, amount of integrations (such as Shopify, WooCommerce, event-based scheduling and more) and their superior advertising structure.

Instagram — If your company has a lot of visual properties, such as a restaurant showcasing menu items or a store featuring new arrivals, Instagram is the ideal social platform. Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, they share a lot of the same advertising properties, and you can even tie the two platforms together to maximize your advertising dollars.

Twitter — Twitter, known by many as the “interaction network,” relies heavily on engaging directly with customers and followers. Most companies choose to use Twitter as more of an outlet for support vs. custom content and advertising. Unless your company is planning to heavily interact directly with customers or respond to support issues, most businesses don’t elect to have a Twitter account.

LinkedIn — If your company leans more business-to-business (B2B) instead of business-to-consumer (B2C), then LinkedIn is the perfect platform to boost your company’s social presence while connecting with potential leads. However, most B2C companies don’t have a need to be well established on LinkedIn.

Pinterest — Similar to Instagram in visual nature, Pinterest is best for niche industries such as shops, restaurants and boutiques looking to showcase products and recipes. Unless your business falls under one of these more visual categories, your company is most likely to choose one of the other platforms.

YouTube — For companies where videos are prominent in marketing strategies, a YouTube channel is a must-have. However, most companies don’t opt to have YouTube channels. If your business showcases recipes, how-to videos, product demos or more as part of a marketing campaign, it might be beneficial to have a channel you can link to, but otherwise, YouTube remains as more of a personal content-based platform vs. a business marketing tool.

TikTok —While it is one of the fastest growing social media channels in the world, engagement and impressions on TikTok are going to come down to one vital piece of any social media strategy — content. If you plan to use TikTok as a brand, it will take a vision for the channel that connects with your audience, creativity when it comes to creating videos to share and a cohesive plan amongst your team in putting the content together.

Understanding which social platform is best for your business will not only save you time, it will help you work towards your goals more quickly. That doesn’t mean, however, that there will be less time involved. When it comes to social media, the amount of work you put into the channels is directly tied to the return you will see. Working diligently on your social media profiles and maintaining proper response time to engagements from customers is critical to succeeding in social marketing.

At SmartSolutions, our team can help assess your company’s marketing strategies and efforts and help you create a plan for your digital marketing channels.

Contact our team today to get your free consultation!

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

September 9, 2020January 13, 2021

Quick & Easy Retail Marketing Tips

When it comes to helping your business stand out in the crowded retail industry, a well thought-out marketing strategy and proper execution can be what sets the good retailers apart from the great. And if you’re looking to improve your marketing efforts, there are a few quick, easy things you can do right now to help improve your visibility.

Updating Your Brand Identity

One area that many businesses can improve their marketing is by making sure they are presenting a proper brand identity. Your brand identity is considered to be all the visible elements of your brand — think color, design, logo and signage — that help identify and distinguish your brand in a customer’s mind.

Many businesses, especially those that have been around for decades, may have a mixed brand identity, e.g., some social media channels show old logos, while using new logos on their website.

By taking the time to ensure your brand identity is streamlined across all of your touchpoints with customers — including social media, email marketing, website and various business listings — you are providing them with the important benefit of making your brand recognizable. With a streamlined brand identity, customers immediately identify a certain color, shape or logo with your company, making it easier to connect with your company and separating you from other retailers.

Improving Your Website

In the digital age, it’s not just local retailers that you are competing with, but also national brick-and-mortar and online chains. Companies of all sizes are using search engine optimization (SEO) on their online stores to move up in Google’s search results in an attempt to acquire more customers.

If your website is outdated, with poor design and inaccurate information, you could not only be missing out on sales now, but hurting your chances to acquire future customers as well.

Some simple steps business owners can take right now include updating the website’s information — such as hours, sale information, location information and more — to ensure you’re providing your customers with the most accurate information.

Another way to help your website is to make sure the design is updated to reflect the same logos and branding, and keeping a streamlined look with your social media channels, as previously mentioned.

Finally, you can do some work on your SEO presence to help move your website up in Google’s search results. Some of the small changes to make right away are including your company’s story directly on the home page, considering adding a blog (and updating it regularly with fresh information and customer-oriented topics) and including great, high-quality photography throughout the website.

Making Social Media Adjustments

If your company isn’t currently using social media, setting up the appropriate social media channels for your business should be a high priority.

Nearly 42% of the world’s population — or roughly 3.2 billion people — are active on social media each and every day, and that number is constantly growing. Furthermore, according to GlobalWebIndex, over 54% of consumers will browse a company’s social media to research products or services before making a purchase.

All of your social media channels should have a single, streamlined look — with matching profile pictures (which should just be a company logo), similar cover photos (for Facebook and Twitter) and similar company descriptions and categories across all platforms. By using a single brand identity, your company is recognizable by customers on any platform, eliminating any potential confusion over official company profiles.

Once you optimize your profiles, it’s time for content. A great way to get customers — and potential customers — engaging right away is to interact with them by responding in a timely manner to comments, inquiries and messages on any channel. When producing content, your first thought should always be making sure you’re sharing what customers want to see and information they might be looking for. Social media is also a great place to promote deals, exclusive products, coupons and more.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a nearly unmatched way to help increase your business’ exposure. Over 99% of customers open their email at least once a day, according to the popular marketing company HubSpot. But even more than just increasing exposure, email marketing gives you company new ways to present your customers with different purchasing opportunities.

There are a variety of email marketing platforms that you can set up in just minutes and easily implement into your company’s website, including MailChimp, Klaviyo, and Constant Contact. Almost all of these platforms offer easy setup, customizable options and drag-and-drop email template editors.

Once your email marketing is set up, the various platforms give you an opportunity to get creative and help incentivize your customers to shop with your business. On your website, for example, you can offer your customers exclusive coupons in exchange for signing up for your email distribution list. Using emails to send offers on special product releases, coupons and exclusive deals are another great way to use your email marketing strategies.

Be Informative

One of the most important — and underrated — content tips a business can use today is to create and share informative content with their customers. Having a blog isn’t just a benefit for your company’s SEO — it can also help in providing thought-provoking content to your customers. A business can use a blog on their website to share product tips and techniques; this is a great way to not only drive customers to your website, but to establish your store as an expert.

You can also use email marketing the same way you use a company blog. By sending out weekly or monthly emails with the latest blogs on your website, news from around your business, or even industry information, you can connect with your customers on an informative level — continuing to establish credibility and drive more potential customers to your website.

On social media, posts that contain an informative video (rather than just a promotional post) see an average of 48% more engagement and interaction. Using videos across your social media platforms to share the same information given in the examples above can be a great way to drive traffic and engagement.

Creativity and engagement are the name of the game across all of the digital marketing channels in almost every industry, especially retail. And by just implementing even one of the items above, it can go a long way in helping increase your business’ visibility to customers online.

At SmartSolutions, our team can help assess your company’s marketing strategies and efforts and help you create a plan for your digital marketing channels.

Contact our team today to get your free consultation!

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

August 11, 2020January 13, 2021

Better Business: Utilizing unexpected downtime to learn new skills

While many find themselves spending more time at home or in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, business owners are finding themselves facing new challenges — particularly, more downtime than they might be used to. But just because we have more time to ourselves than usual doesn’t mean we have to stop improving while the world slows down around us.

From internet courses and webinars to Facebook groups and forums, we are surrounded by a wealth of resources when it comes to bettering ourselves and learning new skills. Here’s a few different ways you can continue to better yourself as a person and business owner altogether.

Bring your team together

With all of this unexpected downtime and isolation, teams are more spread out than ever. But thanks to modern technology, that doesn’t mean we have to be “disconnected.”

Use the downtime to bring your team together, whether it be over the phone or a virtual Zoom video chat, and talk to your team about ideas they may have or ways they would improve your business. Harnessing the power of collaboration can help you better understand how to improve your business for not only your customers, but for your employees as well.

Another benefit of using this time to brainstorm with your employees and managers, listening to their ideas and empowering them to voice their opinions, is that it can not only lead to an improved workplace morale — it may also lead to innovative new ways to expand your business.

Learn something new

We’ve all heard the saying, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Well, fortunately for business owners, that tends to be untrue — especially among entrepreneurs, who are learning new things each and every day.

Maybe you want to learn more about coding, to help you build or improve your website. Or maybe you want to improve your writing skills because you want to craft better marketing materials. Perhaps, even, you want to learn more about digital design work, so you can start creating custom designs (or just apply them to your company’s marketing efforts).

Enter Coursera, an online “university” of sorts offering thousands of courses on a variety of topics, in collaboration with universities and companies like the University of Illinois, Duke University, Google, IBM and more.

While pricing varies, you can earn certificates (and even degrees) from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, all from the comfort of your own home. There are thousands of topics you can choose from, ranging from digital design to social media marketing, business leadership and management, information technology and more. To learn more about Coursera’s catalog of learning opportunities, visit Coursera.org.

Improve your customer service and sales skills

As a business, there’s never a bad time to improve your customer service skills and sales techniques.

One free option comes from Bob Phibbs, also known as the Retail Doctor. Phibbs’ “Retailing in the Time of COVID-19” course contains eight video lessons that cover operations, marketing, sales and customer service, all free-of-charge. In addition to the COVID-19 course, the “Retail Doctor” also offers the SalesRX program — a comprehensive sales training program to “get more out of your existing in-store traffic and transform your sales staff with customizable online sales training” for all levels. To learn more about these programs, visit RetailDoc.com.

Get better at social media and email marketing

One of the areas business owners can seemingly always improve in is their social media and email marketing strategies and execution. While social and email marketing can seem daunting, even the slightest of improvements can make a large difference in the online sales your business sees.

Over 99% of consumers open their emails at least once a day, while more than 70% of consumers who have interacted with a business on social media have elected to make purchases from that very same business (HubSpot, 2019).

Popular marketing platform HubSpot offers what they call the “HubSpot Academy,” a resource of courses dedicated to not only helping businesses understand the digital marketing landscape, but help them get better at execution in the process. Courses range from understanding search engine optimization (SEO) to introductions to e-commerce marketing, content marketing, social media strategy and more.

HubSpot’s comprehensive catalog of courses are mostly free, and can generally be completed in under three hours — with some courses even being less than 45 minutes. For more information, you can visit Academy.HubSpot.com.

In short, there are plenty of opportunities to better yourself, your team, your community and your business with all of the extra downtime. By connecting, inspiring and helping one another to improve, businesses can not only survive the current challenges— they can thrive, and will be stronger on the other side.

At SmartSolutions, our team can help assess your company’s marketing strategies and efforts and help you create a plan for your digital marketing channels.

Contact our team today to get your free consultation!

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

July 14, 2020January 13, 2021

Breaking down TikTok for brands

For many brands and influencers, the viral video app TikTok has become not only a steady stream of content and ideas — it’s become a source of income. However, with security concerns and potential government-regulated bans on the way, how should brands be approaching the use of TikTok in their marketing strategy?

What We Know

TikTok has over 800 million active users worldwide as of June 2020, and has been downloaded over 1.5 billion times in the App Store and Google Play. The demographic for TikTok heavily skews to younger generations, with 41% of the user base being aged between 16 and 24 years old.

Usage rates for the app are also through the roof, with over 90% of all users accessing the app on a daily basis, for an average of 52 combined total minutes each day.

Privacy Concerns

On its face, the usage rate and user numbers would appear to make TikTok a valuable asset for brands and businesses. However, in early July, the Indian government officially banned 59 Chinese-based apps, including TikTok, due to border tension with China. Now, the United States is contemplating a similar ban, but not because of tensions – but because of potential privacy issues.

In late 2019, the U.S. military branches blocked access for all personnel to the app, citing a warning from the Pentagon regarding privacy concerns and a “potential risk associated with using the TikTok app.” Now, companies like Wells Fargo are joining in and advising that employees delete the app, not only from their company devices, but from personal devices, as well.

“Due to concerns about TikTok’s privacy and security controls and practices, and because corporate-owned devices should be used for company business only, we have directed those employees to remove the app from their devices,” the statement from Wells Fargo said.

In an article written in The Verge, Russell Brandom dove deeper into the concerns around TikTok, and the challenges it presents to the American government:

“For experts, the concern is less about mass data collection and more about targeted operations that are harder to detect,” Brandom said. “Because TikTok maintains the standard level of invasive app access, the Chinese intelligence services could potentially use it as a portal to surveil specific users or gather compromising information. The FBI has already raised the alarm about Chinese spies stealing US trade secrets, so that same access is even scarier for Amazon or Wells Fargo, which might plausibly have proprietary tech that China wants to steal. As long as the Chinese government can put pressure on TikTok through its ownership, there will be ways to snoop on users without raising alarms. That makes it hard for high-risk users to feel entirely safe, no matter what the app does.”

Bottom Line for Brands

Aside from the obvious privacy concerns — is TikTok right for your brand, anyway? The short answer is: maybe.

While it is one of the fastest growing social media channels in the world, engagement and impressions on TikTok are going to come down to one vital piece of any social media strategy — content. If you plan to use TikTok as a brand, it will take a vision for the channel that connects with your audience, creativity when it comes to creating videos to share and a cohesive plan amongst your team in putting the content together.

At this time, however, due to the mounting privacy concerns (and potential government shutdowns of the app), we would recommend focusing your time and energy on content elsewhere — like Facebook, Instagram or email marketing.

At SmartSolutions, our team can help assess your company’s marketing strategies and efforts and help you create a plan for your digital marketing channels.

Contact our team today to get your free consultation!

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

June 3, 2020January 13, 2021

Latest Facebook & Instagram Updates: Shops

With many companies shifting their business strategies due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a growing emphasis is being placed on the importance of digital and social media opportunities. And although states have begun to reopen their economies, the way customers shop retail locations has likely changed for at least the foreseeable future.

Facebook Shop

In late April of 2020, Facebook announced some new features to help retail shops sell directly to customers using a new “shops” feature on both the Facebook and Instagram platforms. The feature allowed retailers to set up a digital storefront, list products and pricing and accept payments directly from the platforms themselves.

By setting up the “Shop” tab of your Facebook business page, you can promote products — with images, detailed descriptions and pricing — right in your social posts. Furthermore, if you connect your payment processing to the platform, such as Square or Stripe, you can take payments right on the platform — essentially creating a secondary storefront for customers to shop without ever having to leave Facebook, let alone their home.

New Instagram Tools

Instagram has also created and made available some incredible tools for retailers during the COVID-19 pandemic, changing the way retailers and businesses are able to position their posts for not only optimal exposure, but in-platform shopping, as well.

When you create your Facebook “Shop” page, as mentioned above, you will have the option to link your Instagram page to this shop — creating the ability to “tag products” in your posts. This allows your customers scrolling Instagram to learn more about a product, from the description and price to the different colors or related items, all from within Instagram.

» Related: Navigating COVID-19: Marketing tips for small businesses

Another new feature rolled out in April from Instagram was the ability to sell gift cards directly in Instagram Stories, providing retailers with a new, more creative way to keep their customers engaged during stay-at-home orders. By linking a payment processor like Square or Stripe, retailers can use the “Gift Card” sticker in an Instagram Story to allow their customers to purchase gift cards, directly from the platform, of any size.

No matter where you currently find yourself as a retailer, the fact that you need to be pivoting to online shopping — if you haven’t already — is becoming abundantly clear. By setting up an online shop, you open up your business to an entirely new audience, as well as a treasure trove of tools to promote your business and your products digitally.

At times like this, SmartSolutions understands that managing the current state of your company in the midst of a global pandemic can be a massive undertaking. Our team can help assess your company’s marketing strategies and efforts and help you create a plan that will not only help you get through the COVID-19 outbreak, but thrive in the online space well after. Contact our team today to get your free consultation!

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

May 4, 2020October 26, 2021

Best Practices: Advertising on social media

Is your business ready for the 2022 holiday rush?

Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter provide small business owners with excellent ways to execute paid advertising campaigns. Here’s a quick list of digital advertising “best practices” your business should be sure to follow if you’re just starting to wade into the waters of social media advertising campaigns.

Know your Objective

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when getting started in social advertising is throwing a lot of money at a lot of ads on a lot of platforms, without really taking the time to first identify their objective. Are you trying to drive traffic to your website? Or are you trying to gain more signups for your email list? Are you selling products? Or does your business provide a service? All of these questions will change the type of campaign you setup within your chosen social media platforms.

Another area to identify when narrowing in on your objectives is to select the proper social media channels — not everything that will resonate with an audience on Facebook is going to be best suited for Twitter. Without taking the time to analyze the pro’s and con’s of each platform’s advertising capabilities, you could be throwing money away.

Identify your Audience

You don’t necessarily need to spend “big money” in social media advertising to get your desired results. Utilizing customer data and current social audience data, identify your key demographic and their interests, purchase behaviors and more using your chosen social media platform’s advertising dashboards. Facebook, for example, will let you narrow your audience down to not only geographical locations, but specific interests — like other pages, publications or products on the platform.

By identifying your audience early, you can help reduce the amount of “wasted” money spent on those that may not convert, instead targeting an audience that is highly likely to follow through on your desired objective.

Keep it Short, Focus on Visual

No matter the social platform, the emphasis has shifted from text to organic, engaging content. For Facebook and Instagram specifically, it is important that your organic posts keep the text to a minimum. When posting to these platforms, make sure you’re keeping your text to a minimum of 1-3 sentences, at most. Also, avoid using links in the text, when possible on Facebook (you should NEVER use links in text on Instagram), instead using the link preview that Facebook provides.

You should also, if possible, try to utilize high-quality video (over images) when creating your ads. Social posts containing video see over 48% more engagement and interaction, with a share rate of 12x that of generic text and/or static image posts. However, if video isn’t readily available, be sure the imagery you are using is high-quality, and relevant to the ads themselves.

At times like this, SmartSolutions understands that managing the current state of your company in the midst of a global pandemic can be a massive undertaking. Contact our team today to get your free consultation!

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

April 7, 2020January 13, 2021

Navigating COVID-19: Marketing tips for small businesses

With the COVID-19 outbreak continuing to spread across the country, small business owners are being forced every day to make tough decisions in various areas of their businesses — from staffing and payroll to marketing and advertising. At SmartSolutions, we want to help your company navigate these unprecedented waters with some digital marketing tips for your businesses in the wake of a global pandemic.

Don’t “capitalize”

Navigating the COVID-19 outbreak from a digital marketing standpoint as a small business. — Photo: Kira Yan / Twenty20

One of the biggest mistakes that a business can make, from an optics standpoint, is to utilize the pandemic (and the fact that more people than ever are quarantined at home) as an opportunity to boost sales. There is a big difference between helping customers find/shop your businesses, and capitalizing on situations.

Some examples of helping your customers find and shop your business can be offering ordering ahead and curbside pickup options (or even delivery, if you have the capabilities). Another option would be to offer exclusive deals on gift cards to provide your customers a way to help your business now, and keep them coming back later.

Bad examples of “capitalizing” on the situation would include offering distasteful coupon codes (related to COVID-19) for deals using the coronavirus for any type of marketing strategy.

Keep it positive

In the wake of a global pandemic, people are looking now more than ever for positive bits of news — and one of the most popular places they’re going to be looking is on social media.

Use the potential of added exposure to keep your social channels positive and uplifting, with motivational, feel-good and engaging content. This may mean going back through your scheduled social media posts and re-evaluating what you’ve scheduled previously.

Re-focus

With many businesses having to scale back their operations (or shut down completely), the outbreak might be a good time to sit down and re-think your social media and digital marketing strategies.

» Related: Increasing your social media reach in 2020

Although the COVID-19 outbreak is uncharted territory, the need for customers to be able to not only find your business online, but be able to shop and interact, is at an all-time high. Use the potential downtime the pandemic is providing you to re-focus your digital marketing strategies by evaluating your website, social media channels, advertising campaigns and more for efficiency.

Ask for help

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

March 3, 2020March 3, 2020

Understanding Facebook’s 2020 Algorithm Changes

Image via Ryan L, Twenty20

Unless you work at Facebook, you might be unsure of just how the social media platform’s algorithm works when it comes to sorting content in you or your customers’ news feed.

And then, suddenly, you hear two words that make things even more confusing — “algorithm change.”

In 2018, Facebook made significant changes to the way its algorithm sorts content, most importantly prioritizing organic content — meaning you would be seeing more from your friends and family, and less organic posts from brands and businesses, even if you do choose to follow them.

So as we get into the heart of the 2020 calendar year, what are some of the things your business pages need to know about Facebook’s news feed changes, and how can you best ensure your organic reach won’t be overly affected?

News Feed Changes

As previously mentioned, whenFacebook made a change to the news feed’s algorithm in 2018, it prioritized organic engagement and “meaningful interaction.” You might be asking yourself — what is considered “meaningful?” According to Facebook itself, interactions in the news feed that would be deemed “meaningful” are:

Multiple users replying to each other’s comments on a video they watched or an article they read in the news feed
A page responding to a user’s comment on their post
Users commenting on or interacting with a page’s live video
Users responding to page posts shared through Messenger
Any interactions that users have with a page post that has been shared by a user

Declining Organic Reach

While many jump to blame Facebook’s algorithms as the reason their posts and pages are seeing a decreased organic reach, one other explanation is simple: there is more competition for news feed space than ever before. From Facebook’s “Why is Organic Reach Declining?” help article, they explain more:

“More and more content is being created and shared every day. You’ve probably felt this change yourself. Just a few years ago, sharing important moments and experiences, articles you’ve read, and photos and videos of your loved ones was a relatively labor-intensive process. Today, thanks to devices like smartphones, many people can share this content with just a few swipes of the finger or taps of a button.

There is now far more content being made than there is time to absorb it. On average, there are 1,500 stories that could appear in a person’s News Feed each time they log onto Facebook. For people with lots of friends and Page likes, as many as 15,000 potential stories could appear any time they log on.

As a result, competition in News Feed — the place on Facebook where people view content from their family and friends, as well as businesses — is increasing, and it’s becoming harder for any story to gain exposure in News Feed. In addition to the growth in content, people are also liking more Pages. Facebook’s director of product management for News Feed told TechCrunch this April the total number of Pages liked by the typical Facebook user grew more than 50% last year. With each new Page like, competition in News Feed increases even further.”

More “Personalized” Experiences

One of Facebook’s driving motivators behind news feed changes (besides, of course, privacy issues and government inquiries), is the desire to make Facebook a more personal social media feed.

One of the updates we saw in 2019 was the introduction of customized surveys in the news feed, allowing users to indicate what kind of content they would like to see more of.

Personal use information from close friends, photos, locations, and liking and commenting are also being fed into Facebook’s news feed algorithm, helping the platform figure who you likely have a close relationship with and who you are more likely to want to hear from more.

Every company has a story — and at SmartSolutions, we’re passionate about helping you tell that story.

Looking to give your company’s social media marketing presence the boost it needs to start seeing a more positive return on your investment? Click below or call us today to get your free consultation!

Category: Marketing

Best Social Media Platforms for Your Business

1. Set your goals and determine your audience

2. Select the appropriate social channel(s)