This month, Facebook dropped a big bombshell on business owners, brands and publishers alike. In a blog post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined a plan to prioritize content from friends and family in individual newsfeeds, while demoting posts from businesses, brands and media.
The problem
It goes without saying, but the implications for businesses and brands are enormous. How will they survive on the platform now that Facebook is proactively demoting their content?
For years, brands have been promised that building up their audience networks and followers on Facebook’s platform would reap rewards; in fact, in 2017 this promise helped Facebook capture more than one in five U.S. digital ad dollars. Zuckerberg’s latest proclamation, however, seemingly flushes that investment down the toilet.
The solution
While there is real cause for concern, it’s no time to panic. The solution is much more obvious — and familiar — than people think. If Facebook is going to prioritize posts from actual people, then businesses need actual people to post about them. It’s really that simple.
Even before Facebook’s proclamation, some studies had shown that content created by consumers has a huge influence on others’ purchase intent when evaluating whether to buy a product. Facebook’s shift reinforces this paradigm, making it blatantly clear that those with the most power to influence any given person are the people within his/her personal network. For business owners and brands, there are three distinct takeaways:
- The attention span and appetite for interruptive ads and sponsored content is virtually non-existent. They can’t simply “buy” an audience anymore.
- Now, the only surefire way to reach social audiences — on Facebook and across channels — is for brands to inspire their audiences to do the talking for…
