What a year it’s been for social media managers and we’re only in May! 2018 has seen a barrage of social media updates brought about by new data rules, scandals, and network updates.
At Contentworks Agency, my team knows that keeping pace with social media updates is essential because it ensures our social media strategy remains agile, relevant, and compliant. If you’re working for a big brand, then it’s especially important that you take note of the new rules.
With so many updates, I’ve picked out the key points that you need to act on right now to remain up to date.
1. Verify Facebook Admins
The social media giant has around 200 million fake or duplicated accounts right now. That’s huge. “In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 10 percent of our worldwide MAUs (Monthly Active Users),” Facebook said in its latest annual report.
This poses a ton of problems for the network, some of which include fake news and stolen identities, and others which are related to skewed ad data.
What’s Changing?
Facebook has announced that it will require admins who manage pages with large follower counts to get verified by Facebook. Large page managers who don’t clear the verification process won’t be able to post.
If you’re managing large political pages you may face even stricter verification rules. You’ll need to submit government-issued IDs and provide a mailing address for verification. You will then be sent a unique code (Google style) which you’ll need to enter into your Facebook page.
What Should I Do?
As yet, Facebook has not been clear about what constitutes a page with “a large number of followers”. In my mind, it will be 10,000+ but that’s just a guess.
If you’re working for a big corporation, the chances are someone in your company has set up a “fake” profile at some point to manage your page and ad account. It could be under your company name, CEO’s name, or the marketing manager who left 5 years ago. Whatever the situation, you need to check your admin roles. Make sure that the current page admins have live and working profiles and that the ad account is linked to one of them.
2. Get a Grip on Algorithm Changes
I know, algorithm changes suck. Especially the Facebook page algorithm which saw page engagement drop dramatically this year, even among big brands.
Research from Social@Ogilvy found that for Facebook business pages with more than 500,000 likes, organic reach was as low as 2%. And this was before the most recent update rolled out. In January 2017, for example, 41% of BuzzFeed’s desktop traffic came from social media. However, this portion dropped to about 25% in December 2017. Similarly, Vice’s social channel traffic dropped by 18% during the same period and Mashable’s dropped by 12%, according to SimilarWeb.
What’s changing?
Nothing and that’s the problem! Many of us (myself included) have not done enough to respond to the social media updates, especially the drop in engagement on our Facebook pages. Of course, failure to sit up and act will only result in a continued drop in traffic, leads, sales and results and that’s not good news for social media managers.
It’s not all bad news though. In a press release by Instagram, it was announced that their feed will go back to chronological order, meaning newer posts will likely appear first. This means that your content is more likely to be seen organically… YAY.
What should I do?
It’s crucial that you start setting yourself some social media KPIs so you can track the performance of your posts and aim to improve your reach and engagement.
Consider utilizing videos and GIFs if you haven’t already. Create authentic storytelling campaigns, incentives, conversations, and behind the scenes posts to up your audience participation. You’ll also need to reassess your ad spend if you haven’t already. The days of a boost being a nice little extra are long gone. Now it’s a tool for survival.
3. Prepare to Lose Your Twitter Verification
Of all the social media updates, this one…
