Here’s why sharing things like your educational blog post on Facebook isn’t ideal…

In the last decade, social media platforms have exponentially ballooned. With 3.484 billion active social media users, its penetration stands at 45 per cent. It’s a tremendous opportunity for your business to connect with their target audience and market your offerings.

Or is it…?

SparkToro found that the top traffic referrers of the internet are increasingly wary of links to external websites. They want to keep users within their ecosystems.

Ah!

That means that the organic reach of brands like yours is going to continue spiralling downward. So should you abandon social media and solely invest in strategies like content marketing that don’t rely on social media?

Nope.

The extensive use of social media and its ‘stickiness’ makes for an incredible opportunity for brands. Here’s how to wade through the organic reach demise on social media platforms and derive value for your business.

Nail the user intent on each social media platform (and use native content formats)

The mindsets of a user while logging on to different social media tend to vary.

If you’re a SaaS B2B professional, then:

You might log in to Twitter to check the latest industry updates,
LinkedIn might is a tool for expanding your professional network and building your personal brand,
Instagram might act as the watercooler during your work breaks,
Facebook is likely useful for connecting with your friends and family,
And YouTube is meant for binge-watching a web series.

If you’re company targeting above the B2B professional, then sharing your educational blog post on Facebook isn’t ideal. It will get punished by the Facebook algorithm as Facebook wants users to engage on its platform. Sharing a picture of your team is a better bet as it will make your brand more relatable for your Facebook audience.

Also Read: Following Propell Asia graduation, property tech startup GorillaSpace raises seed funding

If you want to leverage the massive reach on Facebook for educating your audience, then consider going live like Carol Tice. She occasionally goes live to conduct live Q & As with her audience of freelance writers.

Similarly, Twitter is largely a public conversation platform. If you share a link to your article, then it makes sense to use emojis, share interesting tidbits, and mention people. Also, use about a couple of hashtags so that users interested in your subject can find your content.

You should also consider hosting Twitter chats as they gel well with the conversational nature of the platform. Also, they are proven to improve the impressions, reach, and engagement of your business. An analysis of nine Twitter chats by Agorapulse found the following impressive results.

On Instagram, users like to consume ephemeral visual content. You can leverage Instagram Stories to take your audience behind the scenes of your company. Occasionally, you can also share inspiring quotes and graphics by your brand. Note that Instagram and Pinterest will give more bang for your bucks if your products are highly visual.

Now, I know that separately taking every social media into account in your strategy and using their native features is a LOT of work.

There are two ways out. Either focus on merely one social media platform at the beginning and branch out later into more platforms.

Else, leverage the Gary Vee content on content on content strategy. It involves creating a cornerstone piece of pillar content (like Gary creates daily vlogs for his YouTube channel). Then, repurposing the pillar content into micro-content formats that suit different social media platforms.

Again, the repurposing of content will need an allocation of resources from your team. However, it will help you squeeze more value from every piece of content you publish.

Focus on building niche-closed communities

As the social media landscape is shifting from being a broadcasting medium to private communication, niche closed communities are a great bet for businesses. Why? Well, a sense of belonging in your customers will propel them to engage with you and each other on subjects of mutual interests. It will also significantly upgrade the experience of your customers with your brand.

As an example, look at the Wait But Why (WBW) Facebook post below on ‘Universal Basic Income.’ You can observe that WBW fans are passionate about sharing their opinions and participating in the community discussions that WBW used to title as ‘dinner table conversations.’

Your Facebook Page audience might not see such an engaged and connected community by itself. The reason is Facebook has come down heavily on businesses. Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post last year about an algorithmic update that will encourage more ‘intentional use’ of the social network.

“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

He went on to say that posts from Facebook groups will see more visibility in the News Feed.

“The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.”

I’m part of Facebook groups of multiple businesses that encourage regular engagement inside the group. An important aspect you should take care of is laying down the ground rules inside the group description. Here’s an example from the Authority Hacker Facebook group.

You also need to actively moderate the group to ensure that the rules are properly implemented. Want to give it a swing? Then, here are the best practices for a Facebook group by Planable that you can emulate.

If your audience prefers hanging out on LinkedIn, then you can also consider starting a LinkedIn Group. They were earlier notoriously known for spam and junk. However, LinkedIn relaunched them and has seen their member engagement double. To get started, you can refer to the LinkedIn Groups guide by Buffer.

Essentially, fostering a community is about bringing together people with a common set of interests and values. If you stay authentic, help your audience, and encourage meaningful discussions, then the social media platform you use doesn’t matter.

With that said, here are guides to building a thriving community on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Change your mindset towards social media

Over the years, referral traffic from social media has continuously been decreasing. For many sites in the Parse.ly network (which monitors 2,500 media sites), the traffic from Facebook has halved.

If you continue to keep posting links to your site, then your reach might decline on almost all social media. The reason is that social media networks continue seeing an increase in content generated on their platforms. It is difficult to stand out and get clicks.

Also, as social media platforms run on an ad-based business model, they would rather have brands pay them to send users to your site.

The KPIs for your organic social media marketing efforts need to change from clicks, conversions, and revenue to engagement and brand awareness. Interacting with your audience regularly on social media will build a better relationship and up the loyalty to your brand.

It’s about tweeting out quirky updates on GoT alongside your brand of cookies like Oreo.

And featuring your customers using your product as does GoPro.

Also, answering your customer queries and complaints as quickly as possible like Starbucks.

Do you see any of these star brands obsesses over pushing links to their site in every social media update?

So you shouldn’t focus on being overtly self-promotional either.

But it’s not all rainbows…

Also Read: Retail-targeted image recognition startup Trax close to being next Singapore unicorn

How will you justify your time spend on social media without tangible metrics like leads generated?

Well, social media can lead your target audience towards your brand and in a couple of weeks, maybe, lead to them buying your products. You can use reports like “Assisted Conversions” inside Google Analytics to attribute the indirect role of social media played. You can read the detailed guide on setting up Google Analytics for social media at Sprout Social here.

Final thoughts

The way consumers are using social media platforms is changing. You can’t expect to post excessively promotional updates on social every day and expect to earn sales. Rather, you need to start meaningful dialogues around your brand and relentlessly help your audience.

I have shown you the strategic mindset shift you need to make towards organic social media marketing. And the tactical steps using the social media tools available on different platforms. Now, it’s your turn to implement them and ramp up the goodwill of your brand using social media.

Are there any other ways you use to reach your customers organically on social media? I would love to hear your tips in the comments below.

—

e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

The post A guide to wading through the organic reach demise on social media appeared first on e27.