Fanslike Agency created the #SwanseaIsCulture campaign in 2017 when Facebook had twice the reach to audiences than it does now in 2020.
The landscape around social media is definitely changing. We work on the frontline of social media and below your will read our findings about what’s working and what’s not.
And we’ve seen some super interesting changes on some of the channels. Below I’ve shared my two insights for Facebook and Twitter for the coming year.
Facebook Business pages seem to be stuck in a rut. Yes you can boost out to your followers and you can send targeted ads but it’s costing more and more money to do so - on a daily basis for small creators and businesses it can become a drain on resources to get your posts delivered to your followers on a daily basis.
Since 2015 we’ve been running ads on Facebook and they previously proved to be excellently cost efficient and effective – you could find new followers for your page for as little as 25p. Most importantly once you got the follower, these were real people. Creative posts would get a good proportion of engagement with the new followers who would start talking to you on the page.
And then the price of the ads went up and up and up as more and more brands started using them (big marketing budgets from Adidas, Nike etc). You’d be lucky to get a new follower for a £1. And more importantly you’ll probably never hear from this follower in the years that follow. That’s because with so many ads going out on Facebook, the algorithm is set so high - if someone didn’t hover over that first post on your Business Facebook page, then that person will probably never see another post from that business page in their feed again. A way to test this is to take a look at the pages you follow – you’ll be stunned at how many you follow and how you’ve never seen any of the posts.
Facebook Business pages might as well be publishing to brick walls, the engagement and reach is terrible and sometimes it’s just not worth anyone’s while.
I also wonder who these ads are being delivered to. If you go through your personal feed on Facebook there just aren’t that many ads in your personal feed (which would be annoying right? You’d probably want to leave Facebook) – so I reckon Facebook aren’t delivering them to anyone real – they are using bots.
However, we do still all need a Facebook Business page. It’s like the website of social media. It’s your window to your business and brand.
What do you need to compensate? You need a Facebook Group. This is the small marvel developing for brands and can work by supporting your Facebook page. It’s organic and has a great reach to your audience or customer. People really do share content on Facebook Groups and this is where content can be generated to drive your campaign.
Facebook groups are always active and their members are constantly contributing to discussions and raising new topics – this is engagement like the good old days!
New marketing strategies are required to create interesting Facebook groups – brands are going to have to work out how to find new members and they need to be careful how they speak to the group without losing the member’s loyalty to the group. Influencers can be useful to help find members of the groups but the main strategy will be around THE FAN – the fan of the movie, the fan of the sunglasses or the fan of the car – the fans who make up the members of these groups who share content and comment and engage.
Brands might be able to enter groups but admins are going to need to be careful not to annoy the members, even if they enter the group with offers for the fans.
And there’s a surprising little gem emerging for the creative digital space – It’s twitter. More and more posts are supported with images – blog URL pasting links and uploaded visuals are making twitter posts more eye catching. Twitter is becoming a visual social media platform with no REACH restriction like Facebook Business – what goes out flies out. For me, Twitter is becoming a much quicker and effective way to engage an audience with no costs on ‘boosting’ to get to your people.
And if you do run a Twitter ad, they work better than Facebook and reach real people who will, I guarantee, become active in your fan base.
We believe that 2020 will be the year of the Facebook Group and Twitter for anyone running a creative campaign.
Blog by Miranda Fleming, Director of Campaigns, Fanslike Agency