678-634-2599 Contact@AlexLaldin.com

Nobody Gives A SH*T About Your Facebook Posts

In a study of nearly 3,400 Facebook users, Robin Dunbar, who’s best known for establishing Dunbar’s number, or the idea that people can only maintain approximately 150 stable relationships, has found that in the event of an “emotional crisis,” only 4.1 of Facebook friends can be counted on. What’s worse, just 13.6 Facebook friends will ever share any form of sympathy with friends going through issues. credit PC Mag

Simply put… Your friends don’t care what you had for dinner or about your toddler’s first words and you don’t care what crazy uncle Jim is ranting about. This goes double for your business, and Facebook has made it even worse this year.

“Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.”
“As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”

So… 

What does this mean?

This is Facebook telling business owners that the game has changed. It’s pay to play now more than ever. Now, some may consider this a bad thing for small businesses and to an extent that may be true. However, here’s my take… the playing field is now even. Small businesses can now compete with the larger players in their industry IF and only IF their strategy is solid.
Let’s start with “Social Media Optimization” “Social Media Management” or whatever every social media guru is calling their service these days. Here’s the issue with services like $99 Social, DexYP, or whoever is flooding your inbox this morning. These companies post to your business page on a regular basis, they curate content based on your industry or area and then post links to articles that aren’t on your brand’s site. You’re paying to have traffic sent to a property that you do not own and now what little engagement those posts received is dwindling further.

My advice? Stop reading; take that $200 and take someone to lunch. It’s much more likely to yield a return and at least you get a meal out of it. Or, if you’re serious about growing your business, continue on and I’ll show you the way.