Dear Radio Brands:
Are your clients including Facebook as an important part of their media strategy – not just as an inexpensive way to reach and connect with fans but as a place to spend ad dollars which might otherwise go to radio?
Recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm mean that a smaller-than-ever fraction of fans will see the content your clients post in their newsfeeds. The consequences of this are huge and are summarized in an excellent piece in Business2Community.
As of now, only the brand’s most engaged fans – the folks who interact with a publisher’s posts – will get those posts in their newsfeeds. While this makes sense from the consumer’s perspective and from Facebook’s, for the brands it means one thing only: “Facebook marketing just got a lot more expensive.”
Here are some of the consequences, as noted in the piece:
Owned media is being devalued: You own your Facebook page (in the marketing sense) because you control what content you post there. Similar to a blog, you add content and build an audience. With this change to the Facebook algorithm your audience is further away. You will have to compete with many more posts and updates to be seen.
Facebook is becoming a paid channel: Facebook advertising has always been part of a cohesive social strategy but now it is even more important. Facebook has essentially increased the role advertising plays in getting seen and many pages will have to pay more to be noticed.
Facebook ads will be more expensive: Demand will start to increase for ad space on Facebook which will assuredly increase prices as well. So now you are buying more ads at a higher cost.
If your client is moving dollars from radio to Facebook, make sure to remind them to check their metrics. Unless they work hard to create terrific content that inspires interaction, Facebook may be more of a dead end for a brand’s vanity content than a low cost platform to nurture customers. And while they can buy impressions on Facebook, that’s no substitute for interaction – it’s only a substitute for radio and other media.
For more angles on this problem, see my posts here (“Radio: Your Facebook Page is Un-Liking You”) and here (“Radio – You’re Messing Up on Facebook”).