Friending Facebook for Fun and Profit!
With all the negative feelings about Facebook in the marketing communications industry, I gotta say: Facebook has been doing great by me.
The big meme blasting the social network recently has been the video purporting that if you pay to boost likes they are probably fake. Then came the fashion magazine magnate who spent tens of thousands of dollars on Facebook advertising and got zero return. Finally, marketers are pissed that Facebook is downgrading organic feeds.
The problem with all of these complaints is the fact that if your content is crap it doesn't matter how much you spend on social media, unless people find your content amusing, useful or thought provoking, NO ONE WANTS TO READ IT!
What marketers forget is, before all this failure of their social efforts, was an uprising of users who said they were tired off getting spammed by all the crappy content marketers were forcing on them. Facebook, realizes that their bread and butter is based on positive user experience, and changed their algorithm to bring only the content the users showed interest in. But the marketers figured out how to game that change and the flood of crap content continued. Marketers didn't learn the lesson and, in fact, refuse to change.
So Facebook decided to tell them, "If you insist on filling feeds with crap, you are going to have to pay for the right." What's more, they gave users new filter tools to make sure that those who refused to pay the toll got cut out of the herd.
There is a very easy fix for marketers and corporations who refuse to invest in real marketing: Make better content. The problem, content is neither easy, nor free to create. Someone who has spent decades honing the ability to crank out repetitive, self-serving content can't suddenly switch styles and become interesting and engaging. That's why marketers, politicians (especially politicians), CEOs and venture capitalists need to swallow their pride and hire someone who can teach them how to communicate in the 21st Century, or do it or them.
And that's why Facebook has been doing Footwasher Media a solid.
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While you are 100% correct that quality content is the key to engagement, Facebook is running a very loose ship when it comes to data reporting. If you run a campaign where you pay Facebook for each "like" that your page generates, you will get (and pay for) a very large percentage of fake "likers".
ReplyDeleteWhen you post on your Facebook page, regardless of the "quality" of your post, Facebook will show that post to only a tiny fraction of your page "likers" - even if it's the best post ever written by humans. You have to pay to "boost" the post in order to get Facebook to allow your fans to see it. Then, when you're paying Facebook on a per-click basis for that boost, you will get dramatically inflated reports of the number of interactions. You can track this in a variety of independent ways - bit.ly, Google Analytics, YouTube "view" stats, etc.
What you will almost certainly find is that Facebook consistently dramatically over-reports what they are delivering for your money (and therefore charging you real money for fictitious engagement) - This has no relation to the quality of your posts or the quality of the content you are promoting in general.
It would be nice to believe, as you say, that Facebook "changed their algorithms to bring only the content users showed interest in" but - that's just not the case. Facebook's algorithms bring users the content that Facebook is paid to deliver to them, and then it dramatically over-reports (and charges) for that service.
That being said - even taking the dramatic statistical inflation into account, Facebook is still competitive with the actual cost/value of the engagement it generates. You just have to get past the fact that their reports are a factor of 10x too optimistic, and you're really paying 10x what they say for their role in generating visibility for your content.
All that is true, Kevin, when you don't know what you are doing in the first place. Too many marketers and pseudo-marketers have the mistaken belief that social media is an automation process. Pay the fee, click a few buttons and everything comes in. Social media "experts" have had a significant part in creating that belief. The reality is quite different, however. Before paying the fee and clicking the buttons, you have to do research on your market and potential customers. I did a small consulting project for a local business and walked him through the steps of determining if and where his potential Facebook audience was. Then I helped him figure out what the best type of content would be to attract their attention. Then I helped him find that content on the web and if we could not find it, then I helped him create it. Once all that was done, it was time to click the buttons. The result was a 600 percent increase in business quarter to quarter, all of it from Facebook.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, I put together a program for a local politician for Facebook. Went through the same steps, but when it came to the content development she balked hard. She had a message to put out and she didn't care if the public wanted to hear it. I predicted that without proper content she would lose the election and her FB likes would be filled by people who had nothing to do with the election. She lost.
Most people fail with Facebook because they still want it to be a news release distribution service. Wrong content, wrong medium.
It's still true, Lou, even when you are a team of experts who knows exactly what they are doing.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is a paid distribution service for - whatever kind of content you pay them to deliver. If you pay them to deliver high-quality content, you can get very good results. If you pay them to deliver poor content, you'll get much worse results.
However, none of that has anything to do with the fact that Facebook dramatically over-reports the results you're paying them to deliver. And therefore, since Facebook is charging on a per-interaction basis (clicks, likes, shares, etc.) their dramatic over-reporting becomes dramatic over-charging.
The sad part of this is that Facebook remains a decent value - in spite of all that. There is no need for them to have the inflated reporting, it just kills their credibility. If I offer to sell you gasoline for 10 cents per gallon, then you give me ten dollars for gas, and I pump ten gallons in your tank, I just shortchanged you by 10x. That's bad. It's so bad that you might forget to appreciate that $1 per gallon for gas is still a really good price. This is Facebook's issue.
Facebook isn't some altruistic algorithmic arbiter of people's interests and quality content, however. They are a paid message delivery service and nothing more. They'll deliver whatever you give them - to about 1/10 as many people as they claim, and charge you what ends up amounting to a fair price for what they actually deliver.
Content quality doesn't come into the Facebook equation, though. Quality is up to you - and will be the biggest determiner of your results.
And with that last sentence, we seems o be on the same page.
ReplyDelete