The adjustment from social media success with organic reach to receiving virtually no organic reach at all has been a tough one. Once I used to suggest frequent, quality posts, but now my focuses are vastly different.
Take note, that this is not true for all businesses or industries but rather where I’m finding success with the majority of the businesses I work with. These are small to medium-sized businesses that have a serviced-based focus.
When you have a Facebook page, an Instagram account, a LinkedIn profile or anything online you must keep it active. When someone comes across you and your business you need to be current and so showing up is the least you need to do. Other than that, unless social media is something you really love and have extra time for (ie. no business-owner I know), a bare minimum of posts is fine. I would say a minimum of two per week.
The rest of your time needs to be spent on advertising; targeted messaging that hits the people you need to talk to who will want to buy your services or products. Facebook, in particular, is doing a wonderful job of introducing new and better ways of getting to the people you need to. The more digital the world becomes, the more accurate our profiles of the people we want to reach. This is great news for marketers.
So, yes, you need your Facebook account, because this is where you’ll be doing most of your advertising. You can access Instagram advertising from here too. If you are still boosting posts from your Facebook page, then this should stop. Instead I recommend you should find more accurate ways of reaching your potential buyers by using the Ad Manager or Power Editor. In so doing, you’ll be able to retarget people who already have some contact with including those within your email list, and those that have already visited your website.
We also need to work out ways to capture more people into these more accurate funnels and find messaging that really converts these new fans and email addresses into paying customers.
So fear not, just because organic reach is dead, doesn’t mean your social media is a waste of time. It does mean that you need to be planning your strategies in a different way and investing your marketing money into more revenue-producing operations. It also means you can loosen the reigns a little on the hard work of running inspiring, educational or entertaining posts.
