First question, does growing your social community still matter? The short answer is yes, to a degree! Great! So what now?
Marketing plays a huge role in media buying and for one to compliment the other, certain facts need to be considered. In the past, the more page likes you had on your Facebook or Instagram page, the more legitimate your business seems to be. This also led to increased organic engagement on your page which led to more likes. The reliance on the perception of the legitimacy of your Facebook and Instagram page meant that this was the main goal for many businesses. However social media marketing has evolved over the years and businesses started popping up to fulfill these needs, this caused a surge in illegitimate Facebook likes, or Instagram followers that could be purchased which many brands happily did.
Read more: How to Use a Facebook Group to Grow Your Business
Those metrics of Facebook likes or Instagram follows aren’t as important today, especially when those metrics compete for finite amounts of space and budget. AKA your own ads. But this can start to work against you, because consumers have started to validate the brand by their amount of likes, but not in the way you think. There are many more social proof signals that need to be met for a potential customer to trust your brand.
This biggest factor, your page likes vs your organic engagement, for example. Like if you have more than 50k likes on your page but only get about 50 or 60 likes on your post and 5 comments on average. The customer will think that something is up, when they quickly check your page when they see an ad… Well…atleast I do.
In recent times, Facebook algorithm has tanked the organic reach of normal page posts, this is an important factor to consider. This is due to the competition for space in the news feed, which has rapidly increased as the user base grew. So far, this means that at the moment, a low percentage of your community is selected to see your post. And those who have been selected by the algorithm, have to compete against a news feed that favors ads and their friend’s posts. This can get frustrating, from what I explained above “this makes your brand seem fake” due to the balance between organic engagement and the total likes/follows. It’s not as prominent on Instagram, but we’re focusing on Facebook for now, because many company pages look like graveyards.
Read more: Facebook VS Instagram, What is best for your business?
Page likes don’t really matter as they used to, this might seem a bit harsh, but this is the reality that we live in. The sweet spot is, finding that balance where the organic engagement can compliment the total amount of likes, in order to seem more legitimate to those users who check and care. Less might mean more in this case. Lowering the total amount of likes from “dead” facebook pages, inactive users are those who don’t fall under your demographic, is a good start. This will get you to the point where the discrepancy between your engagement and total likes gets less. You want this.
Encourage your community to engage with your post, and come back weekly or daily to check out the latest deal or next giveaway, you can get creative here. Like Boosted posts – that’s what they are there for, unfortunately, because you’re competing for newsfeed space. You’ll need to pay for that, because at the end of the day, your phone is a little portable billboard. From here when your community has reached that level which might mean smaller, you can restart your community growth as you continue to grow your brand on the business and advertising side. But this only works if you have the right agency partnered with you!
If you are spending over $500 a day and you want to scale your brand
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And that’s a wrap!
I’m Quintin, Media Buyer at DimNiko
