Remember the good ol’ days when your business could post pretty much anything and people would like it? Or four years ago when simply using a photo as a Facebook post would increase your engagement by 110%. Yeah, those days are gone. It’s 2016 and Facebook knows how much you rely on social media marketing – and while using the platform is free, getting impressions for your business definitely isn’t nowadays.
Yes, it may be frustrating, but there’s a reason that Facebook is a business that makes BILLIONS of dollars a year even though their service is “free.” They got you all hooked on their free advertising and then slowly, every time they tweaked their algorithm, made you more and more invisible to your audience. “But they liked my page,” you say. People have had Facebook for so long they have liked hundreds of business pages over the years – which business’ are going to get prime placement in newsfeeds? The ones that pay Facebook for the privilege, that’s who!
You used to only have two options to fix this:
1) You could pay for Facebook ads which get you in front of a broader audience, with a demographic of your choosing
2) For the low-low price of $5-$30 you can “boost” a post that gets you in the newsfeeds of people that already liked your page but aren’t seeing your content organically.
And, you now you have a third option… 3) Facebook Live!
So What is Facebook Live? It is Facebook’s answer to Periscope and it allows you to live stream video straight to your followers in real-time. Your followers can also like, comment and just interact with you in general while you are streaming. Once you are no longer live it also gives you the option of saving the video straight to your business timeline so that people can watch it when they have the time and or so inclined.
Sure, it sounds cool, but why is Facebook Live going to be a boon for your business’ social media efforts? Because Facebook put a lot of money into creating it and people haven’t been using it the way they had envisioned or planned for. Video is a marketing beast, so the big wigs at Facebook know that Facebook Live has the potential to explode in popularity, they just have to help it along and they are helping Live gain popularity by giving you paid placement – for free! Say Whaaaaaaat?! Yes! For free.
There are a few ways that Facebook accomplishes this.
- When you go live, your followers get a notification saying that you are streaming live video
- The Facebook algorithm puts you at the top of your follower’s newsfeeds
- When someone interacts with your Facebook live video their friends are also exposed to your brand
- Once you are done streaming live you can save your video to your page. Again, the Facebook live algorithm will prioritize your saved video to the top of your audience’s newsfeed
- You don’t have to do anything but sit back and watch your organic impressions and engagement skyrocketLike all good things in life (and marketing) there is a catch. Once Facebook Live takes off, you’re going to have to go back to the Facebook pay to convert method. Boourns! But until such a time, take advantage of it while it is here and don’t tell too many people, we don’t want it to take off that quickly. Not super comfortable with standalone Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or LinkedIn, much less Facebook Live? We can do it for you! Check out our super reasonable social media plans and get in touch! We can chat about it.