Your goal with social media is creating a more human experience in a very not human environment. So key #1 is acting like a real human. No real humans just using social media personally and not for business only posts only links driving traffic back to their website. Right? That is the same as meeting a new person, handing them a card and asking them to give you money right away. People do not relate with or resonate with that type of behavior and Facebook knows that too. When you are only posting one type of content that is viewed as “non-natural” behavior. That isn’t how a user of the platform behaves but how someone looking to use the platform would behave. Since it has been shown that you aren’t a real person creating “meaningful interactions” your posts will receive less reach in the newsfeed. What that means is that because you are not behaving like a real person Facebook will show your posts to fewer people, even though they have liked your page, raising their hand and saying I WANT to see this, because it is less likely to be valuable to them. It is less likely to be engaging to them, and above all, it is less likely to keep them on Facebook longer.
This is best illustrated by a client who met with me for a consultation. She is an adorable woman who is very successful in her profession and by most standard incredibly successful in life. She did what most business owners to understand that importance of being on social media but lack the knowledge and time to do it themselves do, she hired it out to a company that promised to post regularly on her account and she wouldn’t have to worry about anything.
***Now let me pause for a moment to get on one of my Whitney soapboxes here and clarify a few things. Hiring out your social media is a smart decision if it is not one of the things that brings you in the most money or that you truly love doing. As a business owner, it is important to hold on to the tasks that only you can do or that you truly love, and delegate out all the others. I am not saying that all social media posting companies are bad, but I am saying that when a company just asks for access to your account (and your money) then basically tells you you can wash your hands of social media, that is a huge red flag! I explained that using social media effectively, means you have to be social, and hiring out someone that has never met you or gotten to know you personally and trusting that there is ANYWAY they can accurately portray you, your brand, your values, or your objectives correctly is ludacris. There are good companies that can take on your social media out there. You just have to be very careful that you are getting a good one and that the message they are putting outfits you and attracts the right people in. Whew, ok. I know that if I didn’t clear that up I would get tons of angry letters from people that do a great job managing social media for clients. So thank you for reading and understanding.
This company took over and started scheduling out daily posts for her. She didn’t know much about social media and every month they sent her a report of how great her posts were doing so she continued paying the bill and thought everything was working exactly as it should be. At the time we met she wasn’t unhappy with what was going on with her social media, mostly because she didn’t know enough to know if what they were doing was right or wrong and what is was supposed to be doing to actually be working. Does that sound familiar?
The company was completing the job exactly as it was outlined in the contract and thus fulfilling their end of the agreement. They weren’t doing anything wrong, but they weren’t doing anything right either. The posts to her page all had beautiful images and were links to articles that people who would be needing her services would be interested in, but there is the first issue. All the posts on her entire page were links. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. The company had told her she didn’t need to touch anything and like a great client, she did exactly what she had been told, nothing. Now when they first took over her page links were something she wasn’t utilizing and thus many of her followers liked the new source of information. But over time they became accustomed to the links to articles and if they didn’t have the time or desire to click over to another website to read an article they just scrolled right by her posts. Had they been seeing videos, pictures, or quotes from her occasionally they would have been much for likely to at least give them notice and even possibly some engagement in the form of a like, comment, or share.
What happened is her content became a one-trick pony and quickly became stale with her audience. Over time her posts received less and less engagement. Not only does that mean that people didn’t engage with what they were seeing but it also means that it triggered Facebook to actually stop showing her followers her posts.
Let me explain that, when content is not getting engagement from the people it is shown to, Facebook (and other platforms) will stop showing similar content to those people. Another way to understand this is that when you first start following someone your interest in what they are posting is generally pretty high and the algorithms know this; therefore, they will show you lots of their posts in your newsfeed. As time goes on, if your interest in that person or even just in the content they are putting out lessens and you stop spending time on it, or engaging with it, you will start to see less of it. Have you noticed that for yourself?
If you are posting only one type of content, that is viewed as non-natural behavior (that isn’t a Facebook term, it’s just how I explain it) and Facebook knows that you aren’t actually on the platform seeking meaningful interactions (that is a Facebook term).
If the content that you are posting is not getting engagements from the people it is shown to Facebook will show them less of your content and more of something they are actually going to engage with. Facebook’s goal is to provide every user with the best possible experience. When what you are putting out no longer provides them the best experience, if it is overly sales, doesn’t provide value, or feels like the same thing they have seen from you 100 times it will stop showing up for them completely because they have stopped noticing and engaging with it.
At the time I sat down with the client mentioned above she had been using the posting service for 3 years without checking on it. In her defense, she wouldn’t have even known what to check for. Using the analytics provided by Facebook, for free, for every business page (go to your business page, click on insights in the top white bar, then posts on the left-hand side) we had to scroll back 3 months to find the last time one of her posts had reached even 1 person. Not even 1 person had seen the posts she was paying monthly to get in 3 months. The reach on her posts was zero.
At first it didn’t make sense to even me, like how can you not even be seeing these posts, your mom, your husband, the people who do work for you and want to support you, how can it be that not one person saw your posts and you didn’t notice. She explained that she doesn’t like Facebook. It isn’t something that she enjoys spending her free time on so she doesn’t and when she hired this company they told her she didn’t need to. They sent her a monthly report which like any good businesswoman she looked over but she never learned what the numbers actually meant and what she was supposed to do with them.
Going back over her posts, as I mentioned earlier, they all looked great. They checked all the boxes for what a great post should be but they didn’t sound like her. They didn’t have the voice, the values, the energy that she did. The things that attracted these followers to her in the first place and that was the real value.
She wasn’t doing everything right when she was doing her content on her own, in fact by many standards she wasn’t going anything “right” but what she was doing was real and it was working. “Working” of course is subjective and can be different for everyone. For her working was getting people to actually relate, to see her as the very best in her field but still someone they could relate to. Someone they could see themselves asking questions without being judged as stupid, or sitting down to lunch and feeling comfortable enough to open up about where they are now and where they need to get to, which is when she can truly tap into her genius and provide amazing value for her clients.
Instead, her social media made her feel like a robot. It took all the amazing and unique ways she is honestly so great at what she does and watered them down until she looked and felt like all her competitors.
I tell you this story for two reasons. One, you have to know how social media works and why they have algorithms, and why these platforms do all the things that we think we hate when we are trying to use social media for business. If you can understand how and why, it becomes so much easier to understand what will work for you.
And two, you don’t have to be perfect to be effective. You can read everything that has been put out by people who are social media experts or have leverage social media to succeed in the same space that you are in. You can follow everything that they have done, exactly as they have done it, and it still might not work for you. You can follow infographics on the anatomy of a post or learn the perfect way to write a caption but in the end, if it isn’t you and it doesn’t feel real IT WON’T WORK.
