Facebook just rolled out more changes… are you ready?
When it comes to managing social media, the list of best practices keeps getting longer and longer. The good news is that if you have a good management team in place, these changes won’t be a hard adjustment. The bad news is… Facebook continues to make it harder and harder for your content to be seen. Here’s a quick-hitter list of what has changed and how to shift your content appropriately:
Desktop And Mobile Views Are Changing
The new desktop view can be a bit confusing at first. It’s simplified in many ways, but now a lot harder to appear high in the scroll. The new desktop layout only shows part of your content, and only one post at the top. Make sure you’ve asked your fans to “Make Us A See First” by walking them through how to set this up in the news feed settings. Educate your staff too – when they see someone taking a photo, they should always remind the guest to tag us and make us a “see first” page. This way, we can see their content and so they don’t miss ours.
Mobile image size is also changing, and so is how much text will appear along side it. Moving forward, the first 3 lines of content will be all that loads on mobile devices – so make sure you communicate your message clearly in those first few lines of text.
Reach And Privacy
More people use social media now than ever before. Most are on daily, but privacy and control requests has made viewing business page content less of a priority. With this latest roll-out, you’ll no longer be able to see if your friends like the same page or posts. This small change also means a smaller reach for your business page. Moving forward, you’ll most likely only see it, if your friend shares the content.
Look A Likes! Upload your database and use their Look A Likes feature. This targets a new audience based on similar behaviors, spending habits, and interests to your list. Facebook also promises that they only use the list to look for similar people, and then deletes it.
If you previously purchased fans – which we have never recommended – you’ll be penalized. You’ll also be penalized if you don’t post often to your page or if it becomes outdated, which leads us to the next point…
Content Matters
Well it always has. Post often and consistently. Respond with 24 hours to comments and messages, but engage with them too. Invite new engagers to Like your page, but also respond to comment conversations. Duplicating content from previous posts will hurt, but you shouldn’t be doing that anyway. Also, make sure you aren’t “like baiting” – your content should never be too promotional – comment, like, share “asks” will hurt. Link to the platform you’re on, vs. going to your website and don’t boost your posts – they aren’t generating much new reach for you anyway.
Download the Facebook Business Suite app and get rid of your other scheduling softwares. It’s not perfect yet, but it is a much more user-friendly tool for managing Facebook and Instagram and doesn’t have a monthly fee. The drawback is you still can’t upload two different image sizes or share to stories at the time you schedule your posts, BUT you can view all notifications in one place, and assign follow-up to different managers which is so important with hotels and restaurants.
Videos. They continue to be important, short and sweet has always been the rule, but 3 minute long videos – is totally the sweet spot now.
Let Revutation Manage It All!
Like we said, social media best practices change daily, and keeping up with it all is a full time job! We know you have better things to do, and we pride ourselves in knowing all of this… so you don’t have to.