Is This 1 Franchise Social Media Strategy Sabotaging Your Facebook Success?
Today’s post spotlights one franchise social media strategy that spoils Facebook campaign performance.
First, let’s take a closer look at the Facebook algorithm.
The Facebook algorithm decides what shows up in your News Feed. It’s based on a huge number of factors, many of which the developers will probably take to their graves. But here’s what we know for sure:
- Facebook loves specific user actions. Visibility is awarded to posts with lots of Likes, comments, and shares, especially when they generate this response in a short amount of time. They also give precedence to posts from Pages that users interact with often.This means your franchise social media strategy can maximize visibility by producing content that stimulates these actions. Moreover, you’ll get greater value from your Facebook marketing efforts over time, as every positive user interaction with your content increases your visibility in their feed.
- Facebook dislikes certain kinds of posts. Content that is overly promotional is usually penalized, along with repetitive content and anything that’s baiting clicks or likes. The Facebook algorithm also penalizes anything that includes external links as part of their agenda to keep you on their app as long as possible.
- Family and friends come first. Compared to Twitter and Instagram, Facebook is a much more personal social network, with profiles displaying users’ full names along with pictures of their loved ones. People generally use it to stay in touch with friends and family, rather than interact with strangers (though this certainly does happen), and Facebook knows it. As such, Facebook’s algorithm always gives priority to posts from friends and family.So what does this mean in terms of your franchise social media strategy? Since family and friend posts get top visibility, comments become extremely valuable. If you post an engaging franchise offer that earns a comment from Uncle Ernie, Aunt Erin will see your brand message floating through her newsfeed, and may take it as inspiration for where to invest her savings…
Start engaging users by replying to comments and reviews as often as you can without seeming spammy or insincere. Even a simple question or a “Thanks!” will often be enough to get a reply that draws more eyes to your content. You can also post content that flatout encourages sharing with friends and family.
- Users control their experience. Facebook gives the user robust options to customize their experience. They can block or report offensive content, follow and unfollow Pages at will, and even give certain users or brands priority visibility.This makes it all the more important that your franchise social media strategy stresses quality over quantity. Flooding feeds just for the sake of being seen is just asking to get blocked or unfollowed. Using clickbait or spam tactics aren’t worth it. Authentic communication is one of Facebook’s core values, so approach your posting accordingly, making the effort to share only valuable, informative, or entertaining stuff that users actually want to see. And while this might sound like a contradiction of our last point – to reply to comments and reviews as often as possible – it’s not, because those messages count as authentic communication.
- Facebook believes in constant iteration. This means they’re constantly collecting feedback to tweak their algorithm and update visibility scores. And that’s great news if you’ve been using a broken franchise social media strategy, since a month or two of quality management will get you right back on track.
Are You Making The #1 Franchise Social Media Strategy Mistake?
Facebook is a social media app, but that doesn’t mean it’s a Twitter clone or an Instagram imposter. And it shouldn’t be treated as such.
For some time, some companies’ franchise social media strategy boiled down to using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as a link-building platform. Your company publishes a blog, then a link to your website is shared on social media, and that’s it!
But as we’ve seen, that’s a terrible approach. Treating Facebook like a link-building platform means playing directly against its algorithm. In addition to being penalized for including external links, these posts rarely perform well in short periods of time… unless they use click-bait style copy, which gets you penalized even harder.
It just doesn’t work.
So what’s the right approach?
Facebook is a personal social media platform, and your franchise social media strategy should approach it as such. Serve the people by posting informative and entertaining content that hasn’t been done to death, and spend more time engaging your audience. Link building is okay, but should be done sparingly, and only when you’ve really earned the trust of your audience.
But there’s more to it. Let’s keep talking – call 866-311-7189 or book a consultation online.
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