With Facebook constantly updating, changing, and adding more features it’s hard to keep up. So here are 5 updates and news snippets you need to know about.
Facebook means business.
It may have started as a place to stay in touch with friends and family, but Facebook is increasingly all about business.
At the end of August 2015, Facebook announced that one billion people had used it in one day. That is a lot of people and potentially that means a lot of money but the only real way for Facebook to get it’s hands on that money is for it to be a paid-for media channel and they are constantly trialling new ways to make that option more and more attractive to everyone in business, including you.
So just what has been going on?
A Facebook Beacon for your business.
Facebook’s Beacon allows you to engage with people visiting your showroom. When customers visit your business and have Facebook open on their phone, they will get a welcome note and photo, a prompt to like your Facebook page, top posts from your page and reviews and recommendations.
All this is triggered by a Bluetooth beacon that comes in the post and just gets stuck up on a convenient wall.
At the moment, this is only available in the US but, if it proves successful, it can’t be long till it comes over here.
Create Saved replies saving you time and money.
Facebook is testing a new messaging feature for Pages that enables businesses to create, save and send responses to frequently asked customer service questions and feedback saving your business time, hassle and money.
Once again, this may not affect you and your business today, or even tomorrow, but messaging and on-line chat are becoming increasingly common ways for businesses to communicate with their customers.
It’s a trend that isn’t going to go away.
Is organic reach dead?
Probably the question that needs to be answered before that is, what is organic reach?
As you know, on Facebook, not everyone sees everything. On your own personal Facebook page, you don’t see everything that all your friends post, and they don’t see all your updates either.
This is the same for a business Page.
Let’s say your business Page has 200 fans. When you post an update, only some of them see it in their newsfeed. The percentage of people who see that update or post is known as ‘organic reach’. Last year it might have been 10% or more. This year it’s about 3%.
So 6 people who have liked your Page will see each update that you post.
Unless, that is, you boost it and pay for more people to see it or unless you use Facebook Targeted Advertising to make sure more people see your content.
If you really want to get you content seen the only way around it is to trial Facebook Advertising and see if you get the result your looking for.
Local Awareness Advertising.
So Facebook definitely want you to pay to use them as an advertising channel to reach your customers.
On the other hand, with all their data and all their technology, it can be an attractive proposition.
The new Local Awareness Advertising is a good way for you to reach people when they’re near your business. This could be as little as walking distance or a few miles.
As more than 50% of Internet traffic is now coming from mobile devices, this sort advertising could have real potential.
Watch later.
Facebook are testing a ‘watch later’ button.
For those of you posting video content to Facebook this is good news. Viewers that don’t have the time to watch your video can save it for later. And if they forget Facebook will send a reminder email of saved videos, links and articles.
What’s on your mind?
So as you can see, Facebook changes all the time. What doesn’t change is that it wants to be a successful marketing and advertising channel.
What is interesting from the wet leisure industry perspective is that smaller businesses often do better from engaging with their customers on Facebook than do the global giants.
Sharing pictures of a family soaking in a hot tub seems a bit more appropriate to the social media that is Facebook than being asked to ‘like’ a new flavour of breakfast cereal.
Facebook, and indeed all the social media channels, can help you grow awareness and engagement for your business, so you should be putting your mind as to how best to use them to help your business grow.
‘Like’ or ‘Comment’ by using the reply box below and get the discussion started.
At Wet Leisure we are committed to innovation and knowledge within the wet leisure industry. For more information on marketing and promoting your business check out the other articles on this website.
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