The Facebook Apocalypse: Is The Sky Really Falling? – (And A Stern Reminder)
The first thing I usually do in the morning is log in to [one of] my Feedly.com accounts and check all the latest goings on in the digital marketing world.
Today was just a flood of Facebook posts. Why?
Because *gasp* they are changing their algorithm. What to I hear you say? Take a guess!
Posts from pages are going to be shunned in the feed in favour of posts from friends… unless they get shit loads of high value (wordy) comments… but they will know if you are trying to game the system by asking for comments so that won’t work apparently.
So it’s going to be even more pay to play. I’ve already been classing it as pay to play for ages as the organic reach is only about 10% but there some other potential implications and risks of this latest change:
- Facebook ads will get more expensive – I’ve surprised they have remained so low for so long so fully expecting the cost to rise at some point. People never used to think twice about forking out a ton for TV, radio and print ads despite the lack of data, but laser targeting your audience on Facebook… budgets get discussed. It’s just lack of understanding in most cases but either way it needs mentioning.
- User engagement on the platform will decrease – this is a major risk. If people stop using the platform then there is nobody to engage with your promoted post/ad. Cost will increase further due to increased competition and the savvy marketers will follow the eyeballs to new platforms (that are likely underpriced at that point).
Now I’d like to think the smart guys and gals at Facebook know what they are doing but I know my behaviour on the platform has changed over the years so I presume I’m not alone.
I’ve added all the people I want to see all the posts from into a close friends group and always check this. If I have time, I then head into the wild world of the main newsfeed but my main goal from this isn’t to check other people’s status updates.
It’s to get my news fix from the pages that I follow.
I’m sure I’m not the only one using the platform in this way. Well I know I’m not as most people get their news from it now, so if Facebook removes this then it could go downhill… but I don’t care.
Why I don’t care if this is the death of Facebook – (and what you should do regardless)
Do you care that Yahoo or AOL isn’t a big platform that you can use to reach your audience? Do you still post Squidoo pages? Ezine articles?
No do you fuck (although I was at a shocking seminar recently where they recommended the latter two. Seriously!)
Platforms change and come and go (not saying for a minute that is happening to Facebook though – just making a relevant point) but the eyeballs will always be ‘somewhere’.
You just need to work out where the next ‘somewhere’ will be if they start leaving in their droves.
But wait… you do care because you’ve built up a huge audience on the platform that will be worthless or much harder to reach and YOU DIDN’T HAVE A STRATEGY OR FUNNEL IN PLACE TO GET THEM TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP AND SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR EMAIL LIST!!!
I saw someone in an ecommerce Facebook group post the other day asking about how to get people on your email list from social and some other pillock chimed in saying:
“You don’t want to do that, you want to get them all on Facebook messenger because the open rates are high”
Here’s the big lesson I want you to take away…
What happens if messenger dies? What happens if everyone stops using it or Facebook decides to discontinue it?
YOU LOSE YOUR AUDIENCE
Guess what happens if they are on your email list?
NOTHING. THEY REMAIN ON YOUR EMAIL LIST.
You own your email list and you can do some cool things with it like upload it to the social networks, find data about them and show them targeted ads. The same can be done on Google.
Not to mention you can email them whenever you want (100% reach for free) and the purchase intent on email is generally much higher than on social networks.
So whatever social networks you are active on or whatever platforms you use and do not own, I’d have a strategy to get them off the platform and on to your email list.
All your hard work and activity on Facebook still won’t be wasted if it dies
What’s the first stage of the customer journey? Awareness and the second is engagement.
If you have put a lot of work in building and engaging an audience on the platform but forgot the next stage to get them on your list, it’s not wasted.
You have still made a lot of people aware of your brand, products and services and positively (you hope) engaged them. There are still a lot of commercial benefits to that and if everyone jumps ship to another platform and you follow them, a lot of them will follow you again because they know, like and trust you…
So get them on your list this time! 😉
