In this interconnected world, it’s imperative that brands have a presence on social media to grow their business. There are over 4.7 billion social media users worldwide, translating to 59% of the world population.
Whether you’re a new company that wants to raise awareness or an established business aiming to expand further, social media can be instrumental to achieving your goals. However, it’s enough to simply have your business pages on Facebook and Instagram.
Given how many businesses have social media presence nowadays, your goal should be to stand out. Over the years, social media algorithms have evolved in various ways. A social media algorithm is basically a way for platforms to sort posts on a user’s feed based on their relevance instead of published time.
Nowadays, social media prioritizes which content a user sees first by the likelihood that they want to see it. That is why it is common for people to see posts from a few days before instead of the ones posted recently.
Social media algorithms constantly evolve, which makes it difficult for brands to reach their target audience. However, there are ways for your business to beat algorithms and be seen by the right people. The key is to focus on quality, not quantity. Here are tested and proven strategies to algorithm-proof your business on social media:
Create and share compelling content
High-quality content is one of the best digital marketing investments you can make today. A formidable content plan starts with understanding what your audience needs and wants. You can create content that resonates with the right people by researching their behavior and habits. What’s great about this investment is that you can use them for your other digital marketing efforts, including website content and email newsletters.
Content can range from beautiful photos to videos and infographics to blog posts. It’s vital you choose the relevant media based on the data you intend to share. Once you’ve developed your content, you should post often, but not too much. Attracting your followers with tons of content, albeit striking, risks cannibalizing others.
Moreover, you should consider the timing of your posts. It would be ideal for posting when your target demographic is most active. Fortunately, Facebook and Instagram Insights provide you the data you need to determine the best time for your business to post.
Craft interesting captions
While a picture paints a thousand words, the accompanying caption helps further the story. Your business gets to drive the narrative through strategically formed captions. You can also encourage the right call to action by detailing your captions. You take control of your company’s direction and help your market on its journey.
When copywriting captions, you should avoid using clickbait jargon even though they’re effective in getting people’s attention. You should instead go for a more authentic approach, which your audience will appreciate further. The voice you use is vital to resonating with your target audience, so you should determine the tone that your market will understand.
Moreover, you can add relevant hashtags to your posts to help them reach the right people. However, you shouldn’t go overboard with the hashtags. Using relevant emojis is also a great way to get people’s attention. Before posting captions, your team should double or even triple-check everything. You should avoid typographical errors as much as possible. Frequent errors might discredit the legitimacy of your business.
Target to generate user interaction
According to Facebook, “page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed.” This means that the more interactions your posts generate, your organic reach will improve. The more active your followers are, the better chances your business page has to reach more people of the same profile.
You can start by creating posts that ignite conversations. Proactively seek your audience’s participation by asking them questions or inviting them to share their experience. Another great way to encourage user interaction is to share content that sparks emotions or bears some meaning.
Regarding social media interactions, genuine feedback is more valuable than likes or comments. Getting your audience involved is key to creating relevant discussions. You can explore starting a Facebook group to bring together like-minded individuals or loyal patrons so they can interact and learn from each other. In a nutshell, your goal is to push your audience towards natural engagement.
Reply to your audience
It’s vital that your team makes time to reply to comments and messages on your official business pages. When you reply to a user’s comment, and that person poses another question, that social media platform gets a signal that your content is essential to that particular person. In turn, your company’s posts will more likely appear on their News feed often.
Moreover, being proactive in answering your followers and other people conveys that your business values their experience and that you put them first. You position yourself as a trustworthy brand that people can rely on. Even if the comment is unflattering or damaging, you should take it as an opportunity to make amends and mend your relationship with that user.
In addition, Facebook displays your responsiveness to inquiries made via direct message. This gives other people an idea of how quickly your business addresses people’s concerns. Timeliness matters, so you shouldn’t let too much pass by before you revert to your messages.
Post stories often
Instagram and Facebook stories expire 24 hours after posting, which is why these platforms display stories based on real-time posting. Posting stories is an effective way to algorithm-proof your business because your followers get to see them on their feed right after your post them.
Stories are a great way to share quick updates with your followers. If you recently acquired new stocks of items or if you’re closing your store early, posting a short story can be helpful to get the word out. This eliminates the need for a graphic artist to develop a graphic. In addition, sharing your latest timeline post via stories helps more users discover your posts. All it takes is a few clicks to raise awareness of your newest post.
It would also be nice to share the stories that users tagged you in. They will appreciate the shout-out and might even repost the story they’re tagged in. This allows you to reach their followers who might not even be aware of your business. You can also share relevant news about your industry via stories. Simply being visible to your followers helps put you top of mind.
Post live videos
Your followers get notified your account has an ongoing live video. This is an excellent opportunity to reach your target audience often. If you have an event or an important announcement, going live is an exciting way to inform your target audience.
Live videos put users in the middle of the action, regardless of location and timezone. It’s a fantastic way to involve your followers without inviting them to a physical event. Live videos garner more interactions than regular videos, which means you get more valuable engagement from your target audience.
When posting a live video, you should ensure that the video camera quality of your device is superb. Moreover, you should have an excellent internet connection, so there are no interruptions. Doing a quick technical rehearsal can do wonders to ensure your live videos get posted without technical difficulties.
Invest in ads
Social media ads assure that your business is seen by your followers and other users from the same target market. Unfortunately, the costs of social media ads are on the rise primarily because the algorithm has affected how much time people spend on their platforms. Because users spend less time on social media, there are fewer ad impressions. Thus, it becomes more costly to reach the correct number of people.
What makes ads so effective is that they’re scalable and flexible. Posting ads help you reach more people than your organic posts can. While you should still invest in high-quality organic posts, supplementing your efforts with ads can help your business grow even further.
The key to maximizing social media ads is to fine-tune your audience. While Facebook and Instagram have recommended target audiences, you can take their efforts further to ensure you reach the right crowd. Utilizing all the tools in your ads manager is vital to getting your money’s worth from ads. Your business will enjoy great returns when an ad campaign is done right. Hence, you should make every ad count.
Go local
If you’re a small business, it’s only practical to focus your efforts on people within your area. While it’s great to have worldwide recognition, most people won’t have access to your products or services unless you offer international shipping.
In its goal of creating more meaningful interactions, Facebook is lobbying for a localized approach. This is why you tend to see local news more often on your feed than global happenings unless they’re extremely important.
Given Facebook’s approach, you should pivot your social media efforts accordingly by producing content focusing on the area or city where your business has a formidable presence. Social media analytics help paints a picture of what route you should take for a solid localized effort.
Partner with the right brands or people
An effective way to broaden your reach is to partner with other organizations or people. Instagram now allows users to collaborate. Thus your post will also appear on other users’ timelines.
Choosing the right partners is critical for your business to reach the right people. You should aim for quality, not quantity. You shouldn’t look at how many followers that person or organization has but the type of followers they have. Also, you should go for a partner that is within your means. It’s not intelligent to pour all your marketing budget on a celebrity with millions of followers. Your partners should be able to tap your target audience effectively and within your feasible budget.
Forming solid partnerships reinforces your legitimacy as a company and provides you the opportunity to widen your reach. Moreover, you can learn a lot from your partners’ social media strategies, allowing you to improve your tactics moving forward. Even if a partnership hasn’t been very fruitful, at least your business knows what not to do in the future.
Check your social media insights regularly
There’s no precise method of beating Facebook or Instagram’s algorithm. What might have worked for other brands might not be the best approach that you should take. It’s a trial and error experiment, and it’s vital that you keep on learning and improving.
Fortunately, you don’t have to blindly try different gimmicks to see what tactics work well for your business. Social media business pages are provided insights into the page’s performance. Insights allow companies to monitor how well your page is doing, including data points that cover audience demographics, engagement, and the best time to reach your market.
Regularly monitoring your social media performance allows you to assess your campaigns’ effectiveness and if you’re reaching the correct type of people. Moreover, it enables you to learn from your mistakes and devise better strategies moving forward. Given how much time and effort your team exerts on social media marketing, you should make every effort count.
These are only some effective ways your business can be algorithm-proof from the ever-evolving world of social media. While pivoting your current efforts may be taxing, fortifying your social media tactics will be worth it in the long run. If you don’t change your ways, you risk getting drowned in the sea of posts on social media.
Plus, you don’t have to navigate through everything alone. We at BrightMinds PH have content specialists willing to help you out! We’ll help you devise effective strategies to beat the algorithm and reach the right people. We’ll assist you in staying authentic to your brand while improving your methods. If you’re interested to know more, Book a call with us, and let’s talk about how we can collaborate.
