NXTFactor knows. It’s frustrating. Every couple of months, it seems like there’s a change in algorithm or feature for popular social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. And if there wasn’t, people begin hallucinating and claiming that there was. One month, your social media account may have a huge increase in followers and engagement. The next month, your reach falls behind and the likes on your photos are teetering between 99 and 100. It doesn’t help that social media platforms are testing out the removal of viewing likes to improve the mental health of its users. But is that really a bad thing? No. But, what does that mean for small businesses?
Similar to how marketing and sales have transitioned from word-of-mouth to door-to-door sales to digital ads, social media platforms have evolved from threads of unorganized, mass information to the customized curation of posts. Users see exactly what they want and the type of things they like so they have a better experience. Each view, like, comment, share, and bookmark contribute to that customization.
It is your responsibility as a business to adapt to this evolution or risk failure. So how do we make sure we stay up to date with each change and adapt quickly enough to save our brands?
1. Stay on top of general social media news
Set up Google Alert notifications on your social media platforms. Use keywords like “social media changes”, “Instagram changes”, and “Facebook changes”. Follow other social media keywords that you might not use like “TikTok”, “Twitter” or “YouTube” that you feel is relevant to your research. Sometimes, these companies directly affect each other’s strategies.
2. Always analyze your social media accounts at the end of the month
Which posts did well? Which posts failed? Which posts increased engagement? Why did a post fail when a similar post did extremely well last month? What did you change this month? Have you noticed that videos are doing better than photos? Are posts doing better when you have at least 1 or 2 ads a month?
Keep asking yourself questions and use tools like Hootsuite to compare data and really take the time to make sense of your graphs so you can find out if its a marketing problem on your end or if its a social media change. If you don’t have an answer or solution to your questions, then it’s a hard sign to do more research on improving the aspects that aren’t doing so well.
Have more questions on social media? Give us a call at 844-NXT-IDEA or email us at info@nxtfactor.com to accelerate your digital marketing strategy.