Is Facebook Making a Shift to Pay to Play for Businesses?

Facebook announced an algorithm change last week

Facebook made an announcement last week that they would be adjusting their algorithm to include more posts from friends and family, and less from news sources & businesses. You can read a full write up of the algorithm change on the social dashboard company Hootsuite, over on their blog here.

What does this mean for local businesses?

I wanted to take the time to offer up our thoughts on what this change means for local business. The general consensus amongst the marketing and social media community is that, Facebook is making a shift to pay to play for businesses. This means that the exposure local businesses and media companies once received by sharing content on Facebook, will no longer be shown to as many eyes for “free.”

Let’s say that you made it a point to create awesome, personalized content for your Facebook followers. Facebook’s algorithm was designed to show your content in a follower’s timeline more often than it will after this update. This doesn’t necessarily mean you had equal opportunity when compared to a follower’s friends & family posts, but your post would definitely show more than it will after this algorithm update.

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Less exposure equals less organic business from Facebook

If you want more views of your content, you’ll have to pay for them. This means that you’ll have less of a chance to grow your business organically (aka ‘free’) from Facebook. If you want to engage with your followers, as well as their friends & family, you’ll most likely have to pay for boosted posts of your content.

As a dentist, what can you do about it?

First and foremost, create awesome and personalized content. The more creative and personalized your social media content is, the better! We’ve been telling our clients this for years, and nothing has changed in this department. Even though you might have to pay for more views of your content, you should still focus on the “SOCIAL” aspects of it. It’s supposed to fun and sharable, not stale and corporate. A client of ours, an Oklahoma City Dentist, has a social media game that is ON POINT! I would urge anyone reading this article to check out their Facebook page here to see what I mean. It is filled will hysterical, super personalized content. From funny videos of their staff, to educational pieces by Dr. Grace herself, they do an excellent job on social media marketing.

Not everyone will be this creative, and that’s totally okay. But the more personalized and sharable you make your posts, the better they will perform organically. Even though Facebook is changing their algorithm, doesn’t mean they don’t want great, sharable content to circulate on their network. This is after all, what social media is all about.

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Will it cost me a ton of money to run Facebook ads?

Heck no! And god bless Facebook for the fact that their advertising platform isn’t overrun by large media companies, with their million dollar ad campaigns. Large media companies and brands do participate in Social Media ad buys, but there is still plenty of room for the small/local businesses.

Getting creative with your Facebook ads is the most important thing to keep in mind. Test plenty of different creative concepts, and don’t forget to target different demographics with different messages.

At Elevate DDS we’ve nailed Facebook ads down to a science. You can read more about our Facebook advertising services here.

And you have any questions, please give us a call at (888) 300-8994