I’m always reading and then trying new things. Whether or not they work, I like to share what happened with the testing. This time around I’m going to talk about Facebook business pages; some folks call them fan pages but since mine has my business name associated with it (as you can see by my business logo over there on the right) I’m calling it a business page.
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Just 2 months ago I talked about some changes in promotions of myself and my business via social media, and I declared that Facebook was a disaster. And I wasn’t lying. At that time, there wasn’t anything I could do to generate any interest whatsoever.
I was seriously thinking about dropping the page and moving on with life; I just couldn’t pull the trigger though. Instead, I read a couple of articles that happened to mention a couple of things in particular.
One talked about video and how Facebook was starting to share more of those with the masses. I have lots of videos on two channels on YouTube, and I’d been sharing some of those links. However, they really didn’t seem to be doing much for me.
Sometimes I’m slow though. I finally realized the recommendations weren’t to share links to videos, but to actually upload videos. If you look at your news stream you’ll see a lot of videos there. Many are shared from other pages, but at some point at least half of those are original videos, most very short, but still uploaded directly by the originator.
I decided to take a shot at uploading my own videos to my business page. What I noticed that instead of when I used to share videos that linked to YouTube and got less than 10 views, suddenly videos were getting upwards of 30 to 50 “reaches”. That doesn’t actually mean people watched them, but underneath the reaches you see the view figure, and those had at least doubled from what I was getting before. Not all of them but more of them.
The other article talked about more free flow thoughts on a page rather than linking to blog posts, which is what I mainly did. On that front I should have been paying attention to the few times when I actually wrote something original on the page. Those always got way more views than when I’d write a sentence or two and then pasted a link.
Thus, it was time to try a couple of new things. One involved writing brief articles, maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs. The other involved one of my newer Twitter strategies, which was posting an original quote of mine and adding an image to it. Both of those strategies started getting more reaches and views from subscribers to the page, which was uplifting.
I didn’t stop there though. I started to think about sharing some of these things with my personal stream. That came from a personal video I shared last year on this blog when talking about airport stories, which I’d posted a YouTube link onto the business page but never had shared with my personal stream. This time I wrote a brief bit about what happened, posted the video directly from my computer, and also shared the link back to the blog post.
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That bad boy took off, and my friends loved the video. A couple asked for more videos; who’d have thought that would happen? So, I started sharing videos from my business page to my personal page. Not all of them; I know there are some leadership and social media tales that most of the people in my stream could care less about.
Many people love motivational stuff though, so I started sharing those posts. While I was at it I realized that some folks might also like my quotations on my personal page, especially since each one has an image with it.
Success! Suddenly I was getting hundreds of reaches, Facebook was telling me how these posts were performing better than the norm (while trying to get me to pay to promote them further; as if!), and, with just that effort, I started getting a few more people liking that business page. I don’t have a giant number, but at this moment I’m up to 371 when just 6 weeks ago I was stuck on 352.
That’s not bad, especially since I haven’t sent out any new invites during the time. This means that people must be sharing some of my posts because even though half the people who joined already knew me (those are the only folks you can invite to a business page), the other half (I know, 19 means one person would be cut in half; just go with me lol) are people I didn’t know before they signed up to the page.
Frankly, I’ve been happy with what’s been going on. Because of that, my message is starting to reach a few more people and it’s made Facebook a much better experience. I still don’t have tons of activity, but I have some hope for it to happen now. I’ll own up that I haven’t increased traffic to either blog all that much, but because of the increased activity on the page a couple of people will actually click on a blog link now if I promote it a bit better on the page; that doesn’t depress me one bit.
That’s what I’m seeing. No promises that it will work for everyone but that’s my experience. Give it a shot and let me know how it works for you.
How do you find the new Facebook algorithm affects your page? I have been hearing a lot of users (and businesses) complaining that it is almost impossible to get their content out to their fans – even their most loyal brand ambassadors.
I’ll be interested in seeing how your experiment progresses.
Ben, it’s because of the Facebook algorithm that I started sharing some of my own items from my business page. Now, not only are way more people seeing them there (since 80% of the people signed up for my page are also hooked up with my personal profile) but the stuff I don’t share is being seen by more people also. Not to the degree that it was being seen before they started tweaking things but way more than just two months ago.
Hi Mitch,
I am doing social media marketing from long time and I gets good traffic from my own groups and connections since I have connected with several people who have interest in my niche.
of course, posting blog post links on business page sucks. So it is always better to go with quotes and informative stuff.If people found these stuff interesting, they will come to know who are behind this blow and surely love to check out blog also.
Thanks
Jyoti
It does seem to be working better Jyoti. I’ll stick with it until Facebook decides to change things up again.
Good stuff Mitch. I think video is great and have thought many times of making a baking channel on youtube and running those vids on a facebook page as well though like you know, I do not do much facebook anymore…but then Ego gets in the way and remember I do not like my look or my voice and I forget the idea.
LOL! Troy, I tell people all the time to get over themselves when it comes to video because it’s going to look and sound like you already are, and you have the courage to walk out of the house and let people see you everyday already. 🙂 I think you could do well with a baking channel; there’s this young lady I’m subscribed to who makes all kinds of treats; calls them Nerdy Nummies, and she’s quite popular.
Mitch,
Thanks for writing this and sharing. I didn’t realize FB could respond in this way. I post my blog links to my FB business page. I don’t get a lot of comments, but I didn’t think this could work either. So, it’s worth trying. My biggest concern with ALL of social media is that it takes up so much time. If you don’t monitor your time, it can simply evaporate. But, thanks again for sharing this. I will definitely consider doing some motivational messages and see how they go.
Thanks for commenting Yasmin. Yes, social media takes up a lot of time, which is why it helps having some sort of strategy before going for it. For instance, you have many of your blog posts automated on Twitter; did you know you can do the same thing on Facebook, which is what I’ve been doing? The secondary part, where I share something that I think my personal connections might like… that you can’t schedule but you’re not sharing everything with them anyway so it’s easier to put something out here and there and it takes little time to do.
Hi Mitch,
I also have one facebook page and groups, both having good number of members, I think these day social media is a best source for generate best instance traffic on website. I every day god big number of visitors on my website.
Regards
John Crook
Mitch,
Thanks for sharing..!
Actually, since Facebook updated their algorithm. I found that my post not reached a lot of my fan subscribers. it’s a reason that I spent more money for pull up my Facebook post.I always spent $5 to $15 a month with my Facebook promotion.
Yeah..! You said right…uploaded video direct to Facebook is really great idea. I found that a lot of video are attracting users attention, especially video is reached more algorithm.
I know about this information for search engine land, but I never tried to create own video for Facebook.
I think that you post is more reason that I should tried it..
Thanks for sharing.
No problem Kimsea; that’s why I read stuff and test it to see what happens. I hope it works well for you.
Hi Mitch,
I am getting good traffic from Facebook groups when I am active on those groups but getting traffic from Facebook is getting difficult day by day because of reduction in organic reach, recently I started using boost post option to improve the organic reach.
I too agree with you, if we post good quotations and other informative posts on Facebook they will automatically show interest to land our Facebook page, thanks for sharing the information, see you soon with another article.
Yup, it seems like almost every day Facebook is throwing another wrench into our trying to promote ourselves and our business pages. At least you’re paying for that boost; if I actually believed those people were reading or watching my stuff I might think about doing it.
@Mitch Mitchell, I recently saw some stats that suggest organic reach for Facebook pages is now down to 1%. Those shareholders must be riding them hard for ever increasing profits!
That’s how I see things also Ben. I gave it a great try but Facebook seemed like they enjoyed kicking me in the teeth. Now I post occasionally… and more people see each item when I do share something. I’ll go with that for now.
Hi Mitch
I am using Social Media from Long time and i have good traffic on my facebook page i have connected more people who have interested my niche .
my facebook page have posted blogging tips tutorial and seo training lesion
thanks
akhilesh kumar
I’m glad it’s working out for you. I can’t say my page is doing all that well but I am one person short of 400… so that’s something. 🙂